A Son of Surak
by Pat Foley
Summary: Spock's preparations to attend the Science Academy are complicated by his affinity for the Forge. Complete
1. Chapter 1

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 1**

On a late spring day on Vulcan, Spock looked up from his homework as an aircar winked through the security screens surrounding the old Fortress. But the sound was not of a Vulcan craft, puzzling him. He laid his stylus against his lips meditatively. It was past time for his mother to be home from her classes at the Science Academy. His father had come home hours before, and was working in his study.

Spock crossed out through terrace doors on his workroom to look down, but from his present vantage point, high on the rooftop parapets and from this angle, he could see only the top of the flyer. Nothing of its details. Well, perhaps his mother had had trouble with her flyer and someone had given her a ride home. He recognized none of the personages exiting from the flyer. They were being escorted by the guard to the wing that contained his father's office. So probably nothing to do with her.

Spock refreshed his eyes with the view from the parapets before returning to his studies. Far across the plains, the city of Shikahr rose with its many towers, one of them the Science Academy he would soon attend, twinkling lights just beginning to show in the late afternoon. Beyond that, winked the navigation beam from his Grandmother T'Pau's palace. Behind and around him rose the foothills the Fortress had been built against, designed to defend the mountain passes. The hills surrounding the Fortress led up from the valuable city and fertile plains of Shikahr to the Llangon mountain range. Far beyond the city and to the west, he could see, gleaming like a falling star, the trail of some shuttle taking off from the Sirakvui spaceport. Everything in his world was in its place, and he went back to his work with a contented sigh.

But when his timesense reminded him it was the hour for the evening meal, he reflected that one person was not in her proper place, for he hadn't heard his mother's flyer come through the forcescreens. He supposed he could have been so deep in study that he missed it, but he doubted that. Regardless, he knew he had better present himself at the evening meal.

Not yet thirteen standard years of age and lean as a whippet, his parents had recently imposed on him a most unwelcome medical examination. He was no taller than his mother, inches from the adult height predicted by the healers, and his parents had renewed concerns about the sufficiency of his diet. The healers had been dismissive, claiming the growth plates on his long bones were still completely open, and that the line of Surak always matured late in their teens. They estimated the growth spurt leading to his full height would not come for two to four years hence. His parents might have been reassured by the exam, but Spock had not been. The prospect of it had upset him before their investigation began, and meditate as he would, the unpleasant repercussions lingered, robbing him of the appetite that had been the cause of his parents' concern. But regardless of the medical exoneration, and his still fussy lack of appetite, Spock didn't care to incite further parental investigations by being late to a meal when he was home. Saving his work, he walked down the long staircase, oblivious of tapestries laden with lematya symbols and walls covered with pre-Reform weapons and works of art that surrounded him. Having lived among this barbaric splendor all his life, it all seemed quite ordinary to him. But upon reaching the kitchen, he found what wasn't ordinary, the room empty, no meal being prepared, no human mother. A blinking light on the kitchen communications console signaled a message from her.

Frowning, he pressed play.

"Sorry, darling, but I have a student with a thesis emergency. I'm afraid you'll have to shift for yourself for dinner. There should be plenty in the gardens or in stasis. Or worse come to worse, there's always the food processor. I tried to reach your father, but he's incommunicado in a meeting with some Federation official. See that he gets the message. Eat something, please. And don't burn down the kitchen doing it," she warned him, then added sweetly, knowing he would disapprove, "I love you."

Spock huffed. He hadn't burned down the kitchen since he was seven, and even if she did not recall it, he'd had good reason to do so then. 1 He tilted his head, considering his reasoning from the lofty precipice of nearly seven years growth, doubts niggling as to that conviction, and then, unwilling to entertain what was long past, dismissed the thought for more pressing considerations. Just like his mother to be not home, when he **was** home, not hiking the Forge. And after making such a point about his meals too.

He frowned over the prospect of making a meal. He'd just as soon go back to his studies. But his mother had left him an order and he supposed, as a good Vulcan son, and given the dictates of logic that indicated failure to do so might lead to more onerous exams, he supposed he ought to obey.

In spite of his Vulcan training, alone with no witnesses Spock wrinkled his nose at the idea of eating from a food processor, at home where the gardens abounded with the fresh food he much preferred. Of course he'd have to go out to the gardens to pick it, and the Terra-formed gardens were always wet, cold, dank and nasty by Vulcan standards. That was a chore he was too often assigned and that he preferred to forgo without a direct order. Resenting this interruption in his orderly life, he considered what kind of emergency a mere thesis **could** create. Humans were so emotional.

Sighing, he deferred all this to a greater power, and going out the garden court door, crossed the formal gardens to his father's office in another wing of the Fortress. There were corridors within the Fortress that would lead to it, but this was the shorter way. The inner door off the anteroom was closed, meaning his father was in conference. One of his father's aides, Sprue, peering around from his office down the corridor to see who had entered, gave him the jerk of the chin that was characteristic of a Vulcan negative, meaning his father was unavailable.

Spock decided to wait. He could now see, outside the long windows, the whole of the aircar he had spied from above, and that it was marked with both Federation and Starfleet emblazons. Given his father's views on Starfleet were known to be negative, at least as regards any more than a superficial presence in Alliance territory, he somehow doubted the meeting would be very long. Spock waited, meditating on a number of things, the oddity of a thesis emergency, the growling in his stomach, distasteful food processors, the futility of his father's meeting with this official, given his known views on Starfleet, and the incongruity of a flyer with Starfleet and Federation blazons sitting before the Fortress.

He eyed the relatively unfamiliar Federation emblem meditatively. Odd that it seemed a rarity here in the Fortress, given his father's work as ambassador to the Federation. There were images of their clan herald in banner, tapestry and statuary, and more than a few symbols of the ancient Vulcan Alliance, the coalition of many worlds and Vulcan colonies which his father led and had brought into the Federation. But he had never seen any Federation emblems in the Fortress except on communications from the Federation Council. The ones his mother called marching orders and bitterly resented for sending his father on diplomatic assignments, him to boarding school and breaking up their family life. Perhaps that was why the Federation symbol was in scarce residence in the Fortress.

He shelved this fascinating conjecture as the minutes ticked by. His father was normally precise as to meeting times. If Sarek had expected his mother home, as her message seemed to indicate, Spock wondered at him meeting with this Starfleet representative at this time. Was it the visitor who had been late, or perhaps had run over the allotted time? Spock himself would not dare to be anything but punctual if summoned by his father. If Sarek were detained, Spock assumed it was the more illogical species of the Federation causing this delay. He thought he felt a thump, a vibration rather than a sound, as if something had slammed onto a hollow surface, like a desk. He sat up, curious. Sprue also poked his head outside of his office at the vibration. But Sarek's office was quite soundproofed, so their surprise and curiosity went unsatisfied. Until the door opened.

The human who exited apparently didn't have much respect for his own privacy, for he was continuing his argument, gesticulating with his hands in a most uncontrolled manner, even as Sarek was escorting him out. That said much to Spock, both that his father had determined further discussion was pointless even before the human had finished, and that the human was frustrated enough to continue, even past Sarek's indications otherwise. Perhaps the human had actually pounded the desk, as he was pounding the air. Perhaps that was why Sarek was escorting him out now. Spock was familiar enough with his father's snubs to know that they could be obvious when Sarek so deemed it necessary. He listened idly – he could hardly help doing so - as the visitor blustered:

"Ambassador, if you would only consider my position you would see that this proposal is in Vulcan's best interests-"

"I have considered," Sarek said, his even, neutral inflection at odds with his steely tone, "and I must convey to you that it is for Vulcans, most notably myself, to determine what is in Vulcan's and in the Alliance's best interests."

Almost hidden in his corner chair, and ignored by both parties, Spock set his own mouth against a betraying curve at Sarek once again being Sarek. At least for the moment he could enjoy the novelty of not being on the receiving end of such disdain.

"But—"

"I believe your installation at Rigel is sufficient for this quadrant," Sarek concluded. "Good day, sir."

Spock looked curiously at the visitor. He was used to dignitaries coming through the Fortress, used to formal dress, and sets of aides. This personage had many bars of medals, bands and ribbons on his uniform. By human standards that often indicted a high office. But Spock was unused to seeing a being so emotionally wrought. Red-faced and sweating, obviously unacclimated to the planet, so not one of the embassy or local Federation personnel, lips working, almost too upset to convey his message in words due to his extreme frustration, the human was in marked contrast to Sarek's steely control. Yet, in spite of its flaws by Vulcan standards, Spock found something compelling about such passion. He found the incident curious, and filed it away for future consideration.

Sprue began to escort the human toward the outer doors, but, mopping his brow, the man turned as if for a last ditch argument, noted Sarek's cool dismissive posture, turned away in frustration, took sudden notice of Spock sitting in the corner, curious and watchful, and harrumphing, followed the aide out the door.

Sarek turned that critical gaze onto his son. "You want something of me?"

It was one of his father's least pleasant openings, tantamount to saying _go away_ , at least in that inflection. And his swift turn and steely countenance was anything but welcoming. But Spock could be inured to Sarek's brusqueness, when he wasn't, for once, the direct cause of it. "Mother left a message. She will be late."

"Sprue would have seen that I received it."

That was enough of an answer to Spock's unspoken question about dinner, but he was perverse enough, for once being himself cool and in control when he could see Sarek's control had been taxed by meeting this human, to press his father past this clear dismissal. "Should we dine now, or wait for mother?"

Sarek frowned at him. "Spock, in 23.4 days you will be completing your post-secondary education, at least according to existing estimates. You will then begin your internships and advanced work at the Science Academy. Surely that means you can procure a meal by yourself. Without destroying the kitchen," he added pointedly. Echoing, in an unusual coincidence, his human wife's thoughts.

Spock raised both brows, surprised at this, and curious. He let Sarek turn before stating, icy in turn as he rose to go. "That was not my question."

Sarek whirled around. In spite of himself, Spock took a step back at this evidence of Vulcan temper. But Sarek had caught himself in the next instant. "You are still a growing child," Sarek said tersely. "And require nutrition at regular intervals. I will wait for your mother."

Spock flicked a brow and left, offended, slightly superior at seeing Sarek having lost countenance, and also, buried deep, absurdly hurt that his father chose not to share a meal with him just because his mother was not there. Was he not worthy of even that minor consideration? And then he castigated himself for feeling any of those things.

He went to the kitchen and nosed morosely through the cabinets and stasis compartments. Now that he considered it, after that stressful meeting his father was probably far more in need of meditation than food. And he was probably what his mother would characterize as a brat to have goaded his father when his control had been so taxed. But now he himself wasn't too inclined to eat either, in spite of hunger warning him that he needed to. And he also knew, if his mother had been home and had prepared a meal, his father would have eaten with them anyway. It was only his presence alone that wasn't reason sufficient enough - he stopped that thought by main force of will, and grabbed a cereal bar, a compressed log of grains, nuts and dried fruits. But considering its uninspiring prospect, he decided that he required meditation as well before eating anything. Since his mother wasn't home, and his father didn't want him, he would go to the Forge.

Moments later, he came back downstairs, dressed in desert togs. He tossed three of the bars in a light rucksack that contained his computer pad with some school work, added a container of juice and a couple of pieces of fruit. He then left, with somewhat of a satisfied air, a note for his mother that he was spending the night in the Llangons. He shut the garden court door with a sharp snick. The garden path led him from the house out through the formal gardens, past a massive lematya statue, looming overhead in the gathering dusk. At the outer gate, he looked back, thinking of his note sitting forlornly on the pristine kitchen table, a tacit check to the winking gambit of his mother's message light, the parry and thrust of his family's interactions.

He nodded to the Fortress security staff at the gate and crossed to the ancient trail head that led up the mountain. Long ago, his Vulcan ancestors and the Fortress itself had served to guard this one navigable pass against marauders into the fertile Shikahr plains. Now his family had designated this area and the hills and passes above as a historic site, as well as a nature and wildlife preserve, aircars forbidden except for the patrol and emergencies. The lower trail was relatively safe, wide enough for armies to traverse it in double file. But higher up, it grew rocky and steep, and dangerous predators abounded. The gate guards at the Fortress still noted those who ascended the trail past their ancient guardpost and up into the mountains. They notified the Patrol if they failed to descend.

But Spock wasn't considering dangers. The air was sharp and spicy with the coming evening. All around him, he could feel the wildlife stirring, ready for a long night of feasting and roaming. The katabatic winds rushing down from the mountains lifted his hair and ran through his blood like electricity. He had to discipline an equally feral and delighted expression from his countenance. Here, at least, he belonged. Here was refuge, sanctuary, solace, and his heritage. This he had come to regard was his element, his true home.

 _To be continued…_

1 See Small Talk


	2. Chapter 2

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 2**

Vulcans ignore such human milestones as birthdays. But they make elaborate ceremony of some other occasions. Graduation from the Terran equivalent of secondary school preceding university education and advanced degrees being one of them.

Spock could have wished otherwise though, filing on stage and spotting his parents in the audience.

"He's years younger than anyone in his class, his mother whispered to Sarek, spotting him at the same time. The comment registered audibly to Vulcans a dozen lengths around her regardless of her attempt to speak below Vulcan hearing.

"His accomplishments in such youth are to his credit," Sarek replied, for once not denying himself a Vulcan measure of pride. And yes, utter relief that this day, so uncertain in Spock's early infancy, had come to pass. And so satisfactorily. For once, Sarek was uncaring of Vulcan opinion.

"It's a wonderful achievement," Amanda murmured back. "I just wish he wasn't so singularly alone in it."

" _As in his past misdeeds_?" Sarek teased mentally, taking her hand under a concealing fold of her veil of skirt to further their link. And to prevent her from edifying their seated companions with any comment or reply.

" _His Vulcan classmates have had their own misdeeds_ ," she retorted.

He let that line of thought pass, refusing to give it more than its passing due. He considered this the beginning of the end of his long trial of concern for his son's future. Soon Spock would be enrolled in the Science Academy, at the tender age of twelve-

" _Almost thirteen_ ," Amanda thought anxiously, worried it was too soon for such advanced education.

" _Twelve point eight nine standard years_." But Sarek just held his wife's hand more firmly to reassure her, and sat back content. Soon his son would be attending the Science Academy. Upon completing his advanced studies there, he would then teach at that august organization. Devote his knowledge to his people's benefit. Finally, when Sarek thought him fully mature and able to handle the stresses of alien interaction, he would begin to assist with Council, Alliance and Federation tasks. All this cementing his true Vulcan heritage by following in his father's footsteps. No one then could challenge his son's rightful position as heir.

Sarek had planned this course of events when Spock had been sealed to Council at three, not sure even then if it would be possible. And it had indeed been a hard road, with him doubtful more than once. But now, Spock's feet seemed firmly on the path Sarek had set for him with no deviations possible. The difficulties were all past. He could relax, finally, sure of his son's abilities, position and acceptance.

But while Sarek was musing on his son's Vulcan accomplishments, Spock's thoughts, as they did so often, were uncannily echoing his mother's. A fact Spock generally strove to keep hidden. For even now, that would have disconcerted his father from his Vulcan calm.

Even if Spock hadn't been specifically on the lookout for his parents, he couldn't have failed to spy his father, resplendent among the parents in his clan's gold embroidered formal Council tunic. But his father was conspicuous only from Vulcan tradition. No such tradition covered the phenomenon of his mother's golden head among the sea of raven dark ones, drawing every eye to her. Not for the first time Spock found himself illogically wishing, that if his father had **had** to marry a human, and make his son's life an illogical misery, why couldn't he have picked one with a more Vulcan appearance? For in spite of the IDIC doctrine celebrating differences, in **his** experience, being different involved more difficulties than celebrations. The concept might be laudable, Spock thought moodily, as he took his place in the ceremony. But too often the philosophy fell short of reality in practice, preached as it were, yet not lived.

But reality, at Spock's prestigious school, and at such an occasion, was not allowed to be anything but supremely Vulcan. Degrees were awarded, accomplishments and awards touted. Spock came in for more than his share of them, complete with a synopsis of his current research and planned studies at the Science Academy from his preening tutors as he accepted his degree. And, as always, speeches were given.

On Vulcan, commencement speeches were not given by the top graduating seniors nor by illustrious guests, or Spock and Sarek might have been tapped for even more unwelcome notice. Instead the faculty, most notably the headmaster delivered the final address or admonishment of his students, his subject being that even as change came to his student's lives, much as a wind sweeps the planet, still Vulcan remained Vulcan, in spite of all winds harboring change, and so they must stay true to the Disciplines even as they moved into the wider sphere of society.

A faint line between his brows at this address, Spock wondered, as always, if this perpetual harping on keeping to the Disciplines was engendered by his presence in the class. He was too young and too close to the situation to realize that all Vulcans struggled with the superimposed culture they had adopted upon Surak's post war Reforms. He took these admonishments directly to heart as meaning a criticism of his human side.

Sarek took in the standard speech without giving it more than a fraction of his attention, meanwhile concentrating on the freedom and license that, regardless of subject matter studied at the Academy, would accompany his son's switch of educational status. A post-graduate child, one acknowledged to have mastered the Disciplines, was somewhat exempt from the obsessive supervision imposed on younger children. And Spock would have duties now that would disallow such obsessive control.

One manifestation of that freedom was now awaiting Spock at home. Sarek considered this change while watching Spock accept his degree and honors. The boy did so without a fraction of expression, his eyes shifting only minutely to catch Sarek's gaze with its perpetual warning against betraying any emotion. Meanwhile his mother sat at his father's side, her Vulcan dress and hairstyle failing to mitigate her human coloring, and her beaming countenance obvious to any Vulcan, in spite of her futile attempts at Vulcan expressionlessness when she recalled her control.

Spock wondered which of them found this exhibitionism more embarrassing, his father required to publicly acknowledge his half human son, or himself, forced to deal with the spectacle of his incongruous parents. Regardless, as he sat in the back of his father's aircar, flying home, relieved to have the public ceremony over, Spock considered there was no hope for either of them at passing unnoticed. Which at times was all he wanted. Privacy, and at least a modicum of freedom from his obsessively controlled life. He had not thought he was so soon to be in possession of some of that when he clambered out of the aircar. His mother, beaming a smile again, was gesturing to a small vehicle sitting on the hard packed sands before the main gate.

"Well, what do you think of it? It's yours."

Spock went from wondering why he should think anything of an aircar to an astounded glance at his mother, and then a confirming one to his expressionless father.

"A graduation present," Amanda said. "Reward for exemplary effort."

"And traditional," Sarek countered, his even voice making clear he wanted no part of his wife's emotionalism.

Traditional perhaps, Spock thought. But in his case, given he had completed his early education at a younger age than most Vulcan youth, unprecedented and unexpected.

"I can fly this, on my own," Spock questioned, still half disbelieving.

"You understand the mechanics," Sarek said.

"Without a guard escort?" Spock asked, determined to have absolute confirmation.

Sarek knew this was a major shift. Up till now, Spock had usually been escorted to school. But with the giving of the flyer, this step was inevitable. Spock had proven himself and would soon be attending the prestigious Vulcan Science Academy. As much as Sarek wanted to hold onto total control of his child, he knew it was time to relinquish yet more of it. "Unless there are Federation incidents requiring defensive escort -"

"Which happens only too often," Amanda grumbled under her breath, as one who suffered the same fate.

"You may go without," Sarek confirmed.

Spock drew a deep breath at that, and regarded the flyer with more interest. A small two person machine, little more than a sleek airfoil, it was colored a deep pumpkin orange to blend in with Vulcan's ochre sky. Though a minimalistic, atmosphere only Vulcan craft, still it would give him the freedom of the planet. If he was allowed to take it elsewhere than the Academy.

"I can set my own schedule," Spock stated, not quite a question. This was tradition too.

And his father knew it. Sarek hesitated at this near unconditional surrender, but his mother beat him to the answer.

"You will," she said, "come home after school, for the evening meal."

"There are evening classes, lectures," Spock said. "And I will have other duties." He glanced at his father, confirming that.

"Oh, well," Amanda grumbled, knowing this was true. "Provided you let us know when you are missing dinner, that's fine. But I expect to see you every morning at breakfast when your duties don't take you away. And at dinner, unless you've cleared it otherwise.

Seeing Sarek had nothing further to say to this, Spock was more than pleased to settle for this. After a heavily regulated childhood, this was more license than he would have believed to be given. "Yes, Mother," he said. That was all he could say. Thanks were illogical. His father would have rebuked him, if he had dared to give them. He could not betray his emotions by word or expression. But in his heart he was grateful to his mother for her gift. And his look to her said all without words.

She smiled at him, and gave his father a defiant look. "You've had your traditions, Sarek. I'm going to have mine." She went to her son, put her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. "Congratulations, my brilliant son."

Aware of his father's disapproving eyes on them, Spock flushed and stepped out of her embrace. But his mother was not to be deterred. She crossed to Sarek and took his arm too. "And my brilliant husband. Tonight we are going to have a very celebratory dinner, and then we are going to the symphony."

Spock looked at his mother, flushed and pretty, glowing with love, and his father, looking indulgently down at her. And for that evening, at least, Spock was content to be the child of both his parents, with no desire to escape to the Forge.

"Now, my son," she said, letting go of her husband's arm, and gesturing to her son, taking a step to the flyer, "How about taking me for a ride?"

"Amanda," Sarek said, losing countenance in a very human frown.

"Oh, don't be such a worrywart," Amanda laughed. She gestured her son into the pilot's seat. "You did approve him having it, so you agree he's a competent pilot. But **I** bought it, so **I** deserve the first ride."

Spock spared his father a glance. Seeing him speaking no forbidding words, in spite of his father's uneasy countenance, Spock stepped in, and gingerly engaged the engines.

"We would take you with us," Amanda called behind her, "But there's only room for two!"

And Spock and his mother flew off for a test drive, leaving Sarek standing on the hard packed sands before the main gate of the Fortress, shading his eyes against Eridani's rays, watching them sail through Vulcan's cloudless sky.

 _To be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3

**A Son of Surak**

 **Chapter 3**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

Some standard months later, sitting outside Sarek's office, Spock saw the same Federation vehicle outside on the drive, next to his own little pumpkin colored flyer. But he was less sanguine about his own presence. Because this time, he had been summoned to his father's office.

He shifted uneasily on the bench, wondering what Sarek could want from him. He had been serving apprenticeships in the family businesses until the Science Academy began its new session. That too was traditional. The flyer had been a necessity, actually, for him to get around to all of them. So far as he knew, he had been performing at all these myriad tasks satisfactorily. At least, no one had complained directly to him.

He had spent two weeks working on family farms, planting at times, weeding and harvesting at others. He had spent a week as a page or aide to T'Pau, though his father had seemed very reluctant to allow that traditional gesture. Sarek had refused to let him live at the Palace, even though that too was traditional for the assignment. So home he had come every night. That certainly had not improved relations between his father and grandmother.

He had spent a week as an aide or page at Council. It seemed to Spock that Sarek had liked that even less, keeping him close at hand. His father's warning gaze had followed him constantly during that period, but Spock had found some interests there, visiting the archives below and becoming more acquainted with some of the Councilors. He had spent a week working in the holding company for Shikahr Enterprises, mostly being given a walk-through from administrators and legal experts of all the various subsidiaries. He had served short apprenticeships in several of the companies: the luthier shops that made musical instruments, the weaving mills that carded, spun and wove spintassle plants into cloth, various computer and software firms. He had spent two weeks in the clan's shipyards. Most ships were largely assembled by automated robots, and most of the work managed by personnel was actually complicated mechanical repair, software and engineering, rather than the more routine task of actually building ships. But he had still found the shipyards interesting. He had also managed to spend several days learning to take apart and modify his own flyer. That had been entirely useful in ways he would rather Sarek not have discerned, if that was the reason for this summons.

Finally, he had spent a few weeks in what would have traditionally been his role as the heir to Surak in pre-Reform times, serving in the defense of his clan. This no longer required much effort on Vulcan in these modern times, so he had only spent a week learning the planetary patrol and guard divisions. The other three weeks had been in space, one week at Vulcan Space Central, and two more doing what would be considered "traditional" for his inherited position now, serving in ships on the Vulcan side of the Romulan Neutral Zone. But that would only be during free times from the Science Academy. As Sarek had informed him, his education came first. There had also had been a short introduction and cruise through the mainstays of the Vulcan Alliance. He had found all of it interesting, but he had liked the two weeks on the Neutral Zone the best, perhaps because with the Romulans, a real danger, just a few parsecs away, no one on board any of the ships on which he had interned had seemed to be in any way either interested or willing to pursue make believe conflicts over his human heritage.

At least, so he had thought. Now he wondered about that, called before Sarek, presumably for some fault. His gaze rested meditatively on the gardens outside, that same flyer present that had been here before, with its Federation and Starfleet emblazons. That no doubt explained why he was sitting here past his appointed time, forced to wait for a delayed judgment. Humans had no precise time sense. And this human, if he was the same individual, had proven he could be persistent past reason to obtain what he desired.

He watched as Sprue, his father's aide, crossed the room and opened the door to his father's inner office, presumably to tacitly remind the visitor that his appointment time had concluded.

The human was indeed the same visitor as before, and once again, he was arguing even as Sarek was escorting him out. Spock listened idly – he could hardly help doing so - as the visitor blustered:

"Ambassador, I must insist that you reconsider. The recent incursions into the Neutral Zone—"

Spock's attention perked at this, given he had so recently been on the Neutral Zone. There had been no incursions to his knowledge. Meanwhile, Sarek was saying, with an exhausted patience that indicated it was not the first time he had said so, confirming Spock's thoughts, "There have been no incursions on the Alliance side of the Neutral Zone."

"Yet!" The visitor exclaimed, as if this were some material point. "Yet! But there have been on the Federation side! If you show weakness—"

"Peace through strength is not weakness, sir," Sarek said. "And I remind you that Vulcan has been at truce with Romulus for millennia. Allow my aide to see you out."

Almost hidden in his corner chair, Spock set his own mouth against a betraying curve at Sarek once again being Sarek. At least for the moment he could enjoy the novelty of not being on the receiving end of such disdain.

"But with these new incursions on the —"

"I believe your installation at Rigel continues to be sufficient for this quadrant," Sarek concluded, with sententious repetition that, for Sarek, was rather an insult in itself. "Good day, sir."

Sarek looked at him as they passed, and jerked his chin minutely toward his office, presumably to prevent him from overhearing anything further. Spock rose, catching the admiral's attention. The human stared frankly at him, so that Spock wondered what in his person could result in such interest. He didn't realize that Vulcan children were seldom observed by outworlders, and Sarek's child, even less so. But he shelved any thought of the visitor as Sarek appeared and closed the door behind him.

Spock straightened in his chair and swallowed hard, waiting resignedly for whatever judgment and discipline was forthcoming. Apart from the flyer, which he had surreptitiously modified, he really thought he had been good. At least for him.

Sarek sat down behind his desk. Sprue entered for a moment and laid a fiche in front of Sarek before leaving, closing the door behind him soundlessly, not sparing a glance for Spock. Spock wondered what it said about him.

Sarek glanced at the sheet, his face immobile. Rare for his father, Sarek touched two fingers to his temple as if it hurt. Spock supposed it was possible. Human hearing being what it was, they often spoke loudly, even when they were not shouting in anger as this Admiral had done. And even though Sarek had formidable shields, he was still a telepath. Contentious meetings with emotive races could sometimes be a trial.

"Spock." Sarek drew a measured breath, reestablishing his control. "As you know, you have been cleared for advanced studies in two fields at the Science Academy, astrophysics and computer sciences. Because of your extreme youth, the directors of the Academy believe you should only pursue one advanced degree at this time."

Spock lifted his head at this injustice. "I have been pursuing many studies up to this point. My evaluations are as high or higher than any who have been given leave to pursue multiple degrees. I fail to see why, having mastered the Disciplines, I should be considered only competent to pursue a mere one."

"They have made their decision. At least, for the present, I have decided that it will be honored."

Spock shifted slightly, sensing what was coming. "If I can only pursue one course of study at this time, I'd prefer computer science."

Sarek cut him a look. "I have already decided and confirmed that you will study astrophysics," His father continued smoothly. "When you complete that degree satisfactorily, you may study computer science."

Spock understood instantly what the issue was. Advanced study in computer science was something of a gateway to larger things. Physics was physics - natural laws could not very well be subverted. But with extreme knowledge of computers and software, and the license that went with that, one could manipulate many, many things. He realized that he was not being trusted with that advanced knowledge. Yet. He wondered whether it was the Academy that had reservations, or Sarek himself. He thought back to the maneuvering he had done to get himself three days of training in flyer maintenance and modifications, and wondered if that had backfired into three years of physics as punishment. Regardless, the restriction rankled and stirred up something rebellious in him. He fought it down, but it showed in his stiffening posture.

"I am sure you will find the astrophysics curriculum sufficiently absorbing and challenging," Sarek went on sedately.

Thwarted from open argument and rebellion by a decade of training, Spock countered the only way he could. By letting Sarek know, obliquely, he was well aware of being played and could respond in kind. "But astrophysics is not, perhaps, as inherently useful in a daily, practical sense," Spock said with silky intent. "As computer science and programming."

Sarek met his eyes. Spock saw his barb had hit home. They understood each other perfectly. But for once, Sarek did not rise to the bait. He seemed, if anything, weary of such maneuvers.

"You are still at a youthful age, Spock," Sarek said heavily, "where the mere gathering of knowledge has precedence over its immediate practice. You should take advantage of that luxury. And of all your time at the Science Academy. It will not last many more years."

For once, Spock considered that Sarek was revealing, perhaps out of unaccustomed weariness given his last appointment, not just the standard rule of law for the Vulcan way, but a more personal truth. The candor sobered him. He was instantly contrite and regretful of his behavior. Sarek so rarely unbent with him, at least, not lately. "Yes, Father."

"You may go," Sarek said.

Spock hesitated, wanting to prolong the moment, wondering if he did if Sarek would continue in this rare candid nature. Wondering what the human had brought to so weary his usually unbreachable father. Longing to ask questions but unsure of any license to do so. The moment passed before Spock could think up an opening, or dare broach it. Then, with Sprue hovering pointedly in the doorway, signaling the interview was at an end, he left as Sarek had suggested.

Thwarted and frustrated, impatient with himself for not thinking of something to stay his dismissal, Spock stalked from the office unsettled and in a temper only leashed by his faltering control. A temper not improved by realizing he was now locked into at least two years of astrophysics, instead of the joint degree he had hoped to accomplish.

It wasn't that he had no affinity for that subject, he did. But he would have vastly preferred computer science. And studying only one subject would undoubtedly be somewhat limiting in itself. He realized that he needed a period of meditation to settle himself into acceptance of this disappointing change.

And there was one best solution for that, with the benefit that it was entirely so Vulcan and traditional he could not be faulted for it.

After a moment's consideration, he went to change into a sandsuit for a night on the Forge.

 _To be continued…_


	4. Chapter 4

**A Son of Surak**

 **Chapter 4**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

The next night Spock was more reconciled to his changed course of study. He'd attended a preliminary meeting with his advisor at the Academy, received a syllabus for his upcoming curriculum and research schedule. He couldn't deny that it was very interesting, especially given he had meditated and disciplined away his disappointment over the immediate loss of the computer science part of his curriculum. And of course, he had reflected that he could always study that field on his own. In fact, the next few weeks of the Academy term held no classes for him, but were a reading period, for him to review all the listed materials and then be prepared with a research and dissertation subject for future study.

He'd thought this might be a good time to spend several days on the Forge, but he'd received a message that he was to spend part of it back on his internships. Since he was to return to the Neutral Zone patrol, he was more or less content, even though he recognized this was more of Sarek's ensuring he was so busy he could not get into mischief. But he had come to expect such maneuvers. So he came in to the evening meal in a sanguine frame of mind, prepared to be his father's son, if not his mother's, and to behave like the perfect Vulcan heir to Surak.

It perhaps should have been something of a celebratory dinner, given his first day at the Academy, but he could see, as he slid into his seat, that his father was stoic with control, and his mother after a brief smile for him, recognizing what that state meant in her husband, had eyes only for his father.

"Don't tell me it was Admiral Longworth, again."

Sarek flicked a brow as he sat down. "He seems unwilling to accept my judgment on this matter."

"But you've already negotiated the treaty with the Federation that gives the Vulcan Alliance sovereignty in this quadrant of space," Amanda frowned. "Decades ago."

"Sixteen point eight standard years," Sarek said. "With the Romulan incursions on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone, he believes a change is warranted."

Spock sat up, curious. "Have the Romulans been threatening to cross the Vulcan side of the Neutral Zone?" He asked. "It did not seem to me-"he hesitated as Sarek fixed him with a gaze.

"Negative," Sarek said, eying him as if realizing he had been on patrol there recently. Sarek's gaze shifted to Amanda, minutely, as if to underline to Spock not to belabor that connection.

Spock understood instantly. His mother had taken him being away at times for these internships better, on the whole, than she had taken his boarding school absences. Indeed, she seemed to regard it as more traditional Vulcan 'nonsense', as she put it. Neither Spock nor Sarek had given her specifics about all of his tasks or locations. Given her concern over his safety, Spock also saw no reason to belabor the fact that, however minimal, he had been in some tacit danger when on patrol. At least more so than when he had been harvesting plomeek or serving as a page to T'Pau. She might try to curtail or forbid his activities. As they were traditional, that might result in a source of conflict between her and his father. Spock had no wish to be the cause one of those futile, emotional arguments. Eventually his mother would come to know all of what he was doing. But Spock was in no more hurry than Sarek to enlighten her.

"The Admiral did not seem to grasp the point," Sarek continued to Amanda, satisfied that Spock would keep silent on that activity, "that a buildup of Federation forces in this quadrant and on the Neutral Zone could provoke the Romulans. He seems to overlook the obvious, that since our own Romulan wars, Vulcan has kept the peace very successfully before and since Vulcan joined the Federation. And that perhaps Starfleet's own too obvious actions on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone have been inflaming a delicate balance."

"What does Longworth want?" Amanda asked, cutting to the point.

"To set up a Starbase in this system, close to the Neutral Zone, to set up listening posts or stations along the Vulcan side of the Neutral Zone, to have their Starfleet both patrol and be in charge of security for this quadrant, rather than Vulcan Space Central and the Alliance continuing to maintain our own defenses."

Amanda gave a soundless whistle. "Hail, Terran invasion force."

"A Federation one, at least," Sarek said.

"But Starfleet is mostly Terran dominated, at this point," Amanda argued. "All the big cruisers are human dominated, and captained by humans. That's one of the Alliance's main objections to it supplanting their own security, isn't it? It was originally a force designed to serve Terra and her colonies. It hasn't changed much, yet. It would look as if Terra had conquered Vulcan."

"I suspect that the Romulans would take it so," Sarek said grimly. "As well as many in the Alliance and most Vulcans. I have no intention of allowing such to pass. If Romulus considered Vulcan 'conquered' by Federation forces in such a way, they would consider the Alliance ripe for an invasion as well, and be prone to attack. They might indeed consider it justification."

"Cannot the Admiral understand that?" Spock asked curiously.

Sarek eyed him evaluatingly, as if trying to decide if he was now capable of participation in this subject. "He sees it differently, that a combined show of force would suggest a greater strength. Nor does he understand that, even if the Romulans took it that way, that would spur them on to attack before the strength could grow even greater."

"He doesn't understand," Amanda said.

"Not do my explanations, such as I can give, seem to hold much weight. He seems to take my objections to his proposal as based on Vulcan pride-"

"Oh, dear," Amanda said, concealing a smile.

"And Vulcan..." Sarek hesitated, trying to choose a word, "Provincialism? A wish to maintain our status quo in spite of a greater threat. He does not see how the implementation of his proposal could upset our truce with the Romulans. That our joining the Federation has already been perceived by them as a potential threat that they are presently evaluating and that we have acted very carefully to manage."

"He has a military, rather than diplomatic, frame of mind," Amanda said.

"It is difficult to deal with two illogical sets of beings," Sarek said, "both seemingly set on inciting a conflict."

"With poor Vulcan in the middle," Amanda commiserated to her husband. "And you."

"Perhaps," Spock suggested, giving Sarek a tentative glance, "he needs to see the situation."

Sarek pinned Spock with a gimlet glance. "Show an outworlder our defenses?"

"Well, Spock does have a point," Amanda mused. "Words don't mean a lot to these military types. If he sees the ships and patrols, the defenses – you don't have to show him everything, Sarek – then he might be reassured, at least in part. The Federation does seem to think that Vulcans are somewhat passive. You prate a lot about peace and logic. I don't think they realize that Vulcan is not exactly a sitting duck sheltering behind all those words."

Sarek ignored the nonsensical comparison to water fowl with the habit of long practice, to object to something else. "I do not prate."

"Ummm," Striving to keep a straight face, Amanda bit her lips over a betraying smile. "To a human-"

"I'll consider the suggestion," Sarek said and his mouth tensed briefly. "I confess I am at somewhat of a loss in dealing with this individual. My words and our history clearly do not mean much to him. Your suggestion may have some merit, my wife."

"It was your son's suggestion, Sarek," Amanda pointed out.

Sarek gave Spock a look, as if not entirely sanguine about that source of input.

Amanda smiled at her son.

But seeing his father regarding him measuringly, Spock once again felt put in the position of losing one parent's regard while gaining the other's. Considering his schedule, he thought that he might get a quick trip into the Forge in tonight, before leaving for Vulcan Space Central and his connection to the Vulcan Fleet. But his eyes, when he met his father's, revealed nothing but blank control.

A week later, he was monitoring auxiliary control on a patrol vessel on the outskirts of the Neutral Zone, when his father came by, escorting the Admiral on a tour. Sarek's eyes passed over him as if he were invisible. Spock also didn't acknowledge his father by word or significant glance. Only the Admiral squinted at him, as if recognizing the teen that he had seen twice sitting outside the Ambassador's office. He did a double take to Sarek, as if referencing and underscoring the relationship. But he didn't ask to be introduced. And the tour group passed on.

 _To be continued…_


	5. Chapter 5

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 5**

After that, the plague of Starfleet seemed to have been momentarily satisfied. At least, Spock saw no more of the Admiral. Perhaps he had returned to Terra. Sarek never mentioned the issue directly to him. But Spock soon left for another tour of the Neutral Zone where several incidents made him newly appreciative of the Vulcan defensive arm of his clan.

Having passed his trial period in Auxiliary successfully, he'd been given a new status. The ship was the **T'Ianye** , the lead cruiser in the Fleet; the tour was essentially the same, three weeks. But this time he was to be stationed on the bridge and he had been given a junior officer's title for the duration. Previously he'd been given crew quarters. But this time he'd been assigned officer's quarters. Still a two room suite, but they had a larger office attached to the bedroom, a more powerful computer, and a separate tiny meditation niche. He set down his compad by the computer, and the few personal items he'd brought with him on the bunk and looked around his quarters speculatively before hastening to the bridge for departure.

He'd been assigned responsibility for monitoring certain sensors. There wasn't much to scan for in departing from the spacedock around Vulcan Space Central. He suspected he had a backup monitoring him, prepared to supplant his input upon any inattention or failure. That would only be logical. But he took the responsibility very seriously. Senn, the executive officer, took the ship out matter of factly, with its attached squadron in formation. The patrol area outside the Neutral Zone was less than two days away by even minimal warp. While the patrol ships were self sustainable if necessary, none were intended for long missions. Generally they went back to Vulcan every three weeks to provision with fresh food, report, train and take leave, while another squadron moved in to take their place. After a week or two, they headed back out to replace yet another squadron. The two days out to their patrol area were entirely uneventful. Spock learned his assigned bridge consoles and spent a lot of time reading for his physics research.

They reached their station, relieved the departing squadron, received their logs and incident reports and began their patrol. It was two more days before anything happened, days of the monotony of studying sensors that never wavered from showing emptiness, checking equipment and doing ship maintenance as directed and thinking idly of his various optional dissertation possibilities. But he had the ability to compartmentalize his attention. He noted the blip on his panel even as the computer did.

"A ship appearing on sensors, sir," Spock said, studying his instruments, "Romulan War Bird. Two ships. Now, five!" He struggled to keep his voice even with an effort he suspected wasn't total, given what he was now seeing. He forced his voice back to an uninflected tone before he spoke again. "Approaching the Neutral Zone barrier at .8 sublight speed."

"Confirmed, sir." The Executive Office, Senn, whom Spock had suspected was monitoring him, echoed in an even more expressionless timber.

"On visual," Captain Stimmek ordered.

Spock flicked the control sending his sensor relay to the main screen. Swiveling to confirm it, he couldn't suppress an indrawn breath at the sight of the Romulan warbirds, their ships painted in garish colors, their mobile struts rising as they slowed with their arrival at the Neutral Zone boundary as if they were real birds backlifting to land, the hostile squadron filling the forward screen.

The captain glanced at him and raised a reproving brow.

Spock sat up straighter and forced his expression into impassivity, turning back to monitor his board. "They are slowing to .4, Captain."

"They are curious," Stimmek commented. "Let us satisfy them. Speed at .4, helmsman. Spock, coordinate your sensors so that our speed matches theirs precisely as we both approach the Neutral Zone. Senn, coordinate with the _T'Vrik_ and the _Londir_ to accompany us. Call in the _Sasashar_ and the _T'Ring_ to bracket them. Gradually. We have not warbirds, but let us do this gracefully."

"Targets holding just out of phaser range on their side of the Zone," Spock reported.

"Hold just out of phaser range on our side."

The Vulcan ships moved as the Romulan ones paced the Neutral Zone barrier, not hastily, but measured, neither group faster nor slower, the smaller Vulcan ships matching the warbirds ship to ship, tracking and turning in formation, each squadron equidistant from the invisible line in space both refused to cross.

"They are activating long range scanners, Captain," Spock said. "Shall I raise shields?"

"Let them scan," Stimmek said. "That is their purpose. Perhaps they wish to know if we have humans aboard," he said it archly, as if in amusement.

Spock's eyes cut to the captain, but Stimmek did not seem to think he had said anything in reference to his new junior officer.

Spock, attend your sensors!" Senn reproved.

Spock refocused on his board, even as he held his breath, wondering how human he **was** to a sensor scan, concerned if some human element in his body could provoke an altercation. He had not thought of that. He wondered if his father had either, so insistent was he that he be Vulcan.

"They are checking to see if we have joined with the Federation Fleet, here in our space," Stimmek said. "Order the _T'asu_ and the _Sirl_ to sensor range. No need to parade them too close. We just want them to realize their opponent is unchanged."

Senn gave the order, and after a few moments, Spock reported, " _T'Asu_ and _Sirl_ in scanner range of the Romulans."

"Scan the Romulans, Spock," Stimmek said. When Spock looked at him wordlessly, he added, in explanation, "Payment in kind."

Spock took a breath and hit the sensor controls initiating a deep scan of the Romulan ships, their personnel, energy levels, weapons' readiness. All more than the presence, course and speed he had so far been monitoring. He fed the results into the computers, and wondered where this would lead. Would the Romulans object to this tacit sensory invasion? Or would they also consider it 'payment in kind'?

"They have yet to arm, Captain," he said.

"I believe they will not," Stimmek said. "This is but a 'meet and greet', an assessment. We have these periodically.

Spock studied his board, repressing a longing to look at the main screen – he could actually see more from his board, but it was data, not visual. He compared the two forces. The Vulcan ships were smaller, but with _T'Asu_ and _Sirl_ in range, they were greater in number. Their Vulcan weapons, so far as he could tell, were superior, powerful stun phasers, tactical and weapons phasers well beyond stun force, and photon torpedos. The Romulan ships were larger but not nearly as well armed,and their propulsion systems and shields were considerably below Vulcan standards. But if the Romulans chose to cross the Neutral Zone, the battle that ensued could be quite destructive, on both sides, regardless that Spock estimated Vulcan would ultimately prevail. Spock evened his breathing and monitored his sensors, and then suddenly, drew a sharp breath as the Romulans, as if one body, turned and wheeled, like paired hawks in flight.

"Targets moving away, Captain. .6, .8 Now out of sensor range!"

"Very good, Ensign," Stimmek said, his even voice in contrast to Spock's exclamation, which made Spock flush in shame. "They have had their fill for today. I suspect we will see this repeated a few times, before their hunger for information is satisfied. Or until they are convinced we have not turned into Federation cruisers."

And Spock discovered Stimmek was right. He sat through several more Romulan 'inspections'. They all proceeded largely the same. After two weeks at the sensors, he was now sitting at a new station on the bridge, the helm and weapons console. This was the third watch he had been guiding the ship to the Captain's directives, and at least the second time he had been doing so, he knew he wasn't merely operating a dual console, with another ready to over-ride any missed control. He alone was matching speed and course to the Neutral Zone boundary. He was the one facing off, at least via viewscreen, with a squadron of Romulan vessels. After the usual match, parry and pace, he heard Stimmek behind him ordering, "Helmsman, arm phasers."

Spock locked down any reaction under supreme control and gently set the switches to arm the phasers. He felt the subtle vibration that indicated the massive weapons were powering up in the light cruiser. Behind him, Senn checking instruments, confirmed. "Weapons armed and ready, Captain."

"Lock phasers on target," Stimmek said. "Hold position steady."

As if on autopilot himself, so muted with control, Spock carefully locked the phasers on the lead Romulan cruiser, making sure at the same time the _T'Ianye_ didn't edge over that line into firing range. They were only just out of range, but a moment's order could change that. And perhaps that would be the trigger for the Romulans' further aggression.

"Shall we arm shields, Captain?" Stenn asked.

"Negative. Let them scan us."

They hung, waiting in space, while the Romulan considered them, open to attack, ready to respond, but holding. After a moment the Romulan armed his weapons. Almost perfunctorily. He too left his shields down. A dueling contest. Well in control by this time, almost philosophical, Spock kept his ears tuned and his hands at ready. They hung in space for some minutes, no one on the bridge moving, barely breathing. After a moment, Stimmek ordered, "Power down phasers."

Spock did so, fingers gentle and precise on the controls. They hung in space a while longer. Then the Romulan powered theirs down.

"Send a message of acknowledgement and compliments to the Romulan Forces," Stimmek said.

"They are acknowledging in turn," Senn said.

"Bid them good day," Stimmek said. "We shall depart first this time. Reverse course, .4."

Spock watched the Romulan mirror their movements. After a moment, both squadrons were out of sensor range.

"I believe," Stimmek said. "We have proven our point."

Spock raised a brow, let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and turned his head. "Course, sir?"

"Back to standard Patrol pattern."

Spock relaxed so imperceptibly that he felt sure no one could discern he had ever tensed, and set in the usual course. And he pondered what had just happened and his own reactions.

He had felt some shame at his mistakes on the bridge in that initial encounter. But other than the mild censure he had experienced at the time, and it in no way compared to the censure his father would have delivered, no official reprimands or further censures had been forthcoming. By the third encounter, he thought he had been for the most part as outwardly controlled as the Captain. But this last time, having the phaser controls under his fingers, being ready to perhaps take a life, many lives, and risk his shipmates lives in turn, that he found disconcerting. Whether he showed it or not. He had to spend more than a little of his time off the bridge engaged in meditation, rather than in his studies. He wasn't sure he liked this duty. Not that duty was to be liked or disliked. That made it duty. But he thought of Vulcan, innocent and largely unaware of what happened daily here, out on the Neutral Zone. He thought of his mother, teaching at the Academy. He thought of Vulcan's skies with Romulan War Birds above. Of Shikahr, his city, under a Romulan phaser barrage. Then he thought he rather did like this duty, compared to that scenario.

And he thought he was beginning to understand the Romulans and this strange dance they engaged in on the edge of the Neutral Zone. And in spite of the tense moments that ensued with each encounter, the Romulan Fleet remained behind that Neutral Zone, just out of phaser range, wary, intelligent, seeking information of the Vulcan force just opposite. In their own way, respectful of their long held enemy. And given respect in turn by the Vulcan Fleet, according to the opponent's standards. After that last encounter, the _T'Ianye_ saw less of the main Romulan Fleet, and never in such a confrontational situation.

Sitting on the bridge, Spock listened to the Captain holding a biweekly Command Review, discussing the incidents with several Vulcans, including his father, Somar, the head of Vulcan Space Central, and Sicep, the head of the Security Committee on the Vulcan High Council, Stimmek had concluded the Romulans were merely once again testing Vulcan forces and Vulcan presence, to see who and what responded to their feints, and in what force, no doubt due to their increased encounters on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. The Romulans had been largely gathering intelligence. He reiterated that this was entirely usual for Romulus.

"They do share Vulcanoid curiosity," Stimmek remarked to Sarek.

"We will continue the increase in forces by another twenty percent," Sarek said evenly, paying no attention to his son sitting in the outer row just beyond the Captain. "And then hold at that level. The shipyards have been notified. Gather the ship's personnel from Patrol and Space Central, and if necessary from clan guardsmen. Keep this increase in reserve, well out of sensor range of the Romulan Fleet." Sarek tilted his head. "I too do not yet expect trouble. But it is well to be prudent."

Spock studied his father's impassive face on the screen as he listened to Patrol Command acknowledge their orders, and relay their thoughts and advisements to their Council Head. To him, Sarek appeared unchanged by the accounts of the incidents, and only mildly concerned.

Somar, the head of Vulcan Space Central appeared even less so, remarking with his own tilt of the head that was tantamount to a Vulcan shrug. "Romulus is known to test and feint. No doubt someday our ancient cousins will boil over and come across the Neutral Zone to attack in force. But they appear to not have the force or the will to do so now. Provided they are not goaded to do so by shows of either weakness or excessive provocation from the Federation. "

"Agreed," Stimmek said. "We have proven we have the superior edge. And the willingness to defend ourselves. Romulans are warlike, but not unintelligent. We consider the quadrant secure. For the present."

There was a brief discussion on the weaknesses on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone, and the dangers therein. A figurative Vulcan shaking of heads over Federation malfeasance.

"We shall share an expurgated report of the incidents with Federation officials," Sarek said. "Perhaps it will assist them. Somar, you will prepare it for review. Captain, I would have a word with you in private." Sarek's eyes focused, just briefly, on his son sitting at the helm. And then, without further words, he cut the connection.

Afterwards, as Stimmek left the bridge, Spock kept his eyes on his control board. He wasn't much of a clairvoyant, nor had he ever been capable of breaching his Father's shields. But somehow he knew what was following.

Stimmek hit the button on his communications console in his cabin and faced Sarek again.

"Well?" Sarek asked.

"You have my report."

"I have your official report," Sarek clarified, "as Patrol Commander."

"What more can you want?"

"A personal assessment."

"I would have very little more to add, Sarek. None of it of any consequence."

"What might you add?"

Stimmek frowned. "Specify."

"What of his control?"

"I have seen no serious breaches."

"What have you seen?"

Stimmek frowned, frustrated. "Perhaps, in our first encounter with Romulans, a slight failure to modulate tone of voice. A fraction's loss of countenance or attention. All well in hand by the next encounter and never repeated."

Sarek raised a brow. "And you consider that not serious?"

"Sarek, I have known competent officers decades older who have lost more countenance and tone in Romulan encounters. Even well after a first exposure."

"Spock has demands on him greater than those," Sarek said heavily.

"He is over young to demonstrate complete mastery of the Disciplines. In fact, you yourself, Sarek, did not pass mastery until at least two years older, if I recall correctly. We graduated together, as you recall."

"I also had fewer demands and needs for such mastery."

"I fail to understand what you are seeking. I have heard little of your son, but never that he lacked ability." Stimmek frowned again. "Are you questioning his courage? I assure you I tested that thoroughly. He does not lack courage."

"There are many forms of courage," Sarek said remotely, thinking of the courage to put one's fate in and yield to a superior's command. He hadn't found Spock entirely willing to do that with him.

"He has shown no such weakness. Indeed, Sarek if you would wish it, I would have little difficulty accepting the boy on crew. If you require it of me, I will keep him. However, I agree with you that a child that age is best served by continuing his education. Particularly as his intelligence warrants it. I have no shortage of personnel capable of serving on my bridge. But few of those could handle advanced work at the Science Academy. I have no need for prodigies here. Intelligence requires its due. And regardless of that, he is overly young for duty in space. I would prefer not to take such a child. Control or not."

Sarek inclined his head. "I appreciate your assessment."

"Your son will make a fine heir to Surak, my friend. He appears intelligent, disciplined and able."

But Sarek had already cut the connection. Stimmek frowned. "Perhaps I should consider myself fortunate **not** to be an heir to Surak."

Spock had waited for fallout from his shameful emoting on the bridge, but even after his father's conference with the Captain, nothing was forthcoming. He had vowed he would never let his control escape him again. He knew that was an old vow and one often broken, but he thought he had succeeded, for the most part after that first failure, at least in this tour of duty. But he was puzzled as to the lack of comment on that shameful incident. He wasn't quite expecting to be sent home in disgrace, but he had expected some further reprimand. But it appeared none would. He spent the remainder of the tour handling navigation and weapons as before, but the Romulans never appeared after that. The tour went back to routine tasks.

He also found much to consider given Romulus appeared a more hostile foe than he had ever considered or supposed. He had always though the Patrol more or less a convention, like the Guard. The Romulan truce had held for so long he had almost considered the Patrol fulfilling more form than function. There to render assistance to vessels in distress, like the Guard did on planet. But not really there to fight. Now he knew otherwise. And his father's role appeared also somewhat more than he had ever considered.

But just as he had begun to really settle in on Patrol, knowing his stations, beginning to believe he had a place on crew, and to understand more what the Patrol's function was, and that his performance was adequate or even somewhat better than adequate, the reading period for the Science Academy concluded. He was again called back to the task of being a schoolboy, to lectures and theories, labs and seminars.

Returning home, Sarek said nothing to him about this internship. Spock supposed his behavior had not been so bad as to merit any especial notice after all. Or perhaps that he had retrieved himself after his first slip. He was grateful for that. He was aware of his father's eyes following him more when he returned home, but nothing more than that.

Once he adjusted to the abrupt change, he settled into the Vulcan Science Academy with reasonable complacency, attended lectures and experimental labs and did his research. It was a staid, if not uncomfortable life, being stared at for a curiosity aside. But he was used to that when attending any new school. He supposed the Science Academy was no different in that respect. Perhaps the discipline aboard ship had prevented it there, or perhaps it was the increased threat of Romulus. He had hoped it would be otherwise at the Academy considering that all the attendees and instructors had allegedly mastered the Disciplines. But he buried his discomfort at the curious glances and did his best to ignore them, hoping they would soon cease.

In contrast to his somewhat boring life of school and research, and the constriction of his parents' home, he found the lure of the Forge more attractive than ever, a relieving contrast that mitigated his impatience with a course of study he only nominally approved. And a relief from Sarek's brooding watchfulness. He tested his freedom, increasing his visits to every other night. His mother did not like it, he could tell from her tight lipped mouth and her occasional sharp comments. He believed his father might not approve either, but he could not read through either Sarek's shields or his evaluative gaze.

In spite of his mother's claims that she respected his decision to follow the Vulcan way, she wanted more from him – more companionship, more emotion, more interaction. Nor was she above being resentful, and even punitive, when at times he disappointed her. Her desires were so often in direct conflict with his father's dictates and Vulcan disciplines that he believed he could never please her, so he took her dislike in stride. At least, so far, apart from her painful disapproval, she hadn't tried to punish or stop him.

Now that he had reached a certain level of freedom, he found it easier simply to avoid both parents. And while his mother didn't like that either, inevitably it became a new normal for them to step away from each other, rather than engage in conflict. Spock turned toward the Forge, where he never felt alone, lonely, or wanting. It seemed designed for him at this time, a heritage and world where he could lose himself in the moment, in the requirements that the wilderness demanded for survival, and where at least for that moment, nothing else could matter or intrude.

xxx

"So I told my Department Chair, Sedgewan, you may believe in logic, but I-" Reni paused, sensing she had lost her friend's attention. "Mandy, what-" she followed her gaze, seeing Spock walking across the quad into the Physics building. "Well, it's the wunderkind. I have 'wundered' when I was going to see your 'kind'," she teased.

"He's been pretty busy," Amanda said forlornly, missing even the awful pun, her eyes following her son.

"Too busy to come and say hello to his mother, a couple of buildings away?"

"The beginning of the term is always-"

"Mandy, come on."

"It would be illogical," Amanda said tartly. "Given he's just seen me at breakfast."

Reni studied her friend's face soberly. "So what did you expect?"

Amanda sighed. "I know what I expected. That doesn't mean I didn't hope. A little."

"But he's a boy," Reni said, seeking to lessen the hurt. "Acknowledging his mother at school? It's probably the equivalent of asking a Terran teenage boy to wear pink hair ribbons to football practice."

"Somehow, I expect that if I were Vulcan, it would be easier for him to do so," she grumbled. "And it's not as if I plan to embrace or embarrass him in front of the whole Academy of Science."

"Maybe it would be easier if **you** were Vulcan. Then you wouldn't be expecting much. But if he were human, it would be just the same. He's at that awkward teenage phase-"

"I keep telling myself that. Not that it helps."

"Give him a couple of years, and he won't cringe so much when he sees you."

"He doesn't do that," Amanda said, offended, and then laughed. "Well, not much." She sobered, thinking, "I just hoped we could meet, maybe for lunch sometimes? And talk. Especially since I hardly ever see him at home anymore. Mostly just at breakfast, and Sarek is there too, and well, that's not a good time for long talks, with everyone rushing to get out the door and start their day. We used to talk sometimes, after school, just the two of us," Amanda said wistfully. "Before Sarek came back from Council. Now, Spock's almost always out, hiking the Forge."

"Away from Papa Sarek's scowls, I'll wager." Reni said wisely.

"I haven't been so nice to him either lately; I've been so frustrated with his desert treks. And you have the wrong idea about Sarek, honestly. He just seems formidable."

"To everyone on the planet. And half the Federation. The rest follow him like lemmings probably because they're too scared of what he'd do to them if they didn't."

"You have no idea of how hard Sarek has to work to keep that coalition together. You're hopeless, Reni."

"I've met him. I stand by what I observe. You say he is controlled. I say he is controlling."

"Well, he's a Vulcan," Amanda argued. "And I am his wife. Spock is his son. That's sort of part of his tradition too."

"There's a planet here, full of Vulcans with families, wives and sons. But there's only one Sarek that I can see."

"You're right about that. But he never asked for all these inherited requirements."

"He could let up on you and Spock."

"We seem to be all just going through a difficult stage right now."

"They may be going through it. You are dealing with the fallout."

Amanda sighed. "We will get through this - I don't know even what it is, except everyone seems at odds. Federation troubles and Spock transitioning to a new independence. Becoming a teenager, I guess. Somehow I thought Vulcans would be exempt from that. And Sarek can be an awful trial at times. But, honestly, Reni, what husband doesn't have his moments, Vulcan or human? And I really do love him anyway," Amanda said firmly. "He can't help being who he is."

"Insufferable?"

Amanda startled into laughter at that. "Reni!"

"Maybe he can't," Reni said. "But I haven't seen him try, not much. And as for your wunderkind-"

"His name is Spock."

"Too grown up a name for that pint-sized Vulcan," Reni teased. "I'll wager he's more inhibited by what Papa Sarek might say, even more than by those who'd tease him for being tied to Mama's apron strings."

"I haven't tied him," Amanda said doubtfully, then asked anxiously, "Do you really think I have?"

"Can you even ask? With him wandering the mountains with the lematya every night?"

"Not **every** night."

"Give him some time, Mandy. He'll eventually grow out of it. Or up."

"I don't have much choice," Amanda said, her eyes on the doorway Spock had disappeared into, "according to that insufferable husband of mine."

xxx

While Spock was finding some measure of contentment in his more frequent engagements on the Forge, and Amanda was merely missing her son's companionship, even little as it had been, Sarek had come to be made increasingly uneasy by those visits, to note their frequency and to count the few days when Spock stayed home for the evening. And this evening, Sarek knew without any empirical evidence that Spock was not home.

He didn't ask the gate guards, not even by a pointed look – to him that would have been an admission of loss, though what kind of loss he would have been reluctant to admit. He didn't even glance up at the Fortress parapets, where light from a certain set of windows might have spilled onto the ancient stones. And he had already determined that he would not ask the boy's mother. That too was becoming increasingly difficult. Because if he did, he might have to answer questions in turn, questions he was unwilling to entertain about a situation that, if he cared to admit it, was beginning to cause him deep concern. Yet given Vulcan tradition, he had few options to change it.

Instead he climbed the stairs, went past the landing for his own suite, to the rooftop suite where his son had lived since his fifth birthday, after he had passed his Kahs Wan.

If Spock were there, he didn't know what he would say to him upon the encounter. He didn't even bother to rehearse some sort of opening line. Because he knew Spock wasn't. He was no great telepath, and his parental bond with Spock had become practically non-existent under Spock's increasing psi training, so even that explanation didn't convince him. But he knew.

He opened the door of Spock's suite without any preliminary notice, and was unsurprised to find the outer room dark. When he opened doors to workroom, meditation room, bedroom, they were all empty, echoing, bereft of any light save the dusky starlight of beginning evening. He looked down at his son's study space, the computer cold and dark. At his bed, neatly made up with his lematya embroidered clan coverlet over Vulcan spintassle sheets, luxurious fabric intricately woven in clan patterns fit for an heir, but unslept in. There were not even echoes of an aura. Spock had obviously been gone for hours. And perhaps had been only here for minutes then.

 _Not again._

 _What was the boy thinking? How could he keep doing this and still function? When – and where – is he sleeping? What can he be eating? And why does he keep doing this?_

Sarek could not fathom it. And the worst of it was, the very Vulcan traditions that he had made the watchwords of his son's life, and his own, licensed this behavior and limited his options to the point where he was ignobly checking an empty room dreading his son's near continuous absence.

His jaw set as if he hadn't been resisting that loss of control since he had arrived home. And it was only with difficulty he restrained his temper. Once again, his son's illogical behavior thwarted his own control.

 _This can't go on._

 _Only Spock could be so unVulcan, in practicing the most Vulcan of rites._

 _But practicing them to excess_ , Sarek thought. _And tempting me into excesses of temper as well._

 _No. I must simply find a logical reason to cease this behavior._

 _But what?_

He turned and made his way to his own suite. Amanda was working in the little office she kept there, so deeply concentrating that she didn't notice his presence in her doorway. He drew up behind her, so deep in his own musings that he was unprepared when she let out a shriek and flattened herself against her computer, turning to face him.

"You scared me half to death!" she accused. And then remembered her open documents. "If you made me lose my work-" She checked her screen anxiously.

Sarek didn't reply, taxed by his own inherent reflexes, though of a different kind. Vulcans are predators, or were. In spite of five thousand years of relative peace, a shrieking fleeing being, emanating terror, even a bondmate, perhaps in some circumstances, **especially** a bondmate, who can get under one's shields as no one else can, can trigger an instinctive reaction. Sarek froze in place, inches from his wife, eyes closed, fighting for control in a physical body lately too over-taxed by strain.

True to the resiliency of humans, Amanda recovered first, looking back at her husband. "Sarek... Are **you** all right?"

Sarek fought his way back to normalcy, at least such as could be had living in close proximity to a human wife who set his instincts awry and his heart racing in more ways than one. With supreme effort he managed to grit out a reply. "Affirmative."

Seeing he was truly affected by her outburst, Amanda felt contrite. "I'm sorry. But you startled me. I had no idea anyone was here. I just jumped."

"Your reaction is illogical. The Fortress is protected, by security screen as well as guards. And how can you fail to know – to recognize and sense – your own bondmate?" Sarek asked, aggrieved.

She blinked. "I'm human, remember? And no telepath. Look, I'm **sorry**. I said it was reflexive."

"I wish you would curb them," Sarek said crossly. "Vulcans also have reflexes, my wife," he warned, "even if they move us to behave in ways other than our practiced disciplines."

"Well, next time, clear your throat or tap on the doorframe, or something, so I know you are there," she said, marginally offended. "One thing I was never warned about with Vulcans – you are excellent at soundlessly sneaking up on people."

"Rather your hearing is not acute," Sarek said bluntly, forgoing tact in his effort to force his still racing heart into something akin to a normal rhythm.

Amanda drew breath at that near insult, but then let it out without comment as she watched Sarek sink down on a chair across from her. "Well, remember that next time you decide to sneak up on your poor human wife. You know better, anyway. And what made you forget this time?"

Sarek sighed, just a little, and said nothing.

"Bad day?" Amanda asked perceptively. "You look awful."

Sarek raised his head and stared at her, pointedly offended at such a characterization of his control over his countenance.

Amanda blithely overlooked what she called the Vulcan Death Stare, inured from long exposure to something that could set lesser beings gibbering incoherently. She supposed it was useful, at a negotiating table. If an unfair tactic. But it no longer worked on her. "Have you eaten?"

"Negative," Sarek replied.

"Why not change out of that Council tunic? I'll go down and make something."

"You and Spock have eaten?" Sarek asked, with duplicitous intent.

"Spock's not home." Amanda said this with a careless disregard born of frequent experience and her own managing of emotion. "He went out on the Forge as usual not long after he got home from school."

"That was not my question," Sarek said tersely.

Amanda gave him a curious look. "I suppose he grabbed a snack before he left. Or took one with him. I wanted to wait for you."

"A snack." Sarek said the Federation Standard word tersely, underlining its inadequacy. "And after we have so recently spoken to the healers about his questionable nutrition."

She raised a brow, Vulcan style. "Sarek you know I have long ago given up trying to make that child eat. It's useless trying to force him. He's too stubborn; he eats even less. Other than putting food before him at standard times-"

"And yet he is again not here for an evening meal."

"Well, whose fault is that?" Amanda said incredulously. "Weren't you the one that has lectured me, more than once since he passed his Kahs Wan, about his inviolate right to traverse the Forge? It isn't that I can stop him. You made that very clear, every time I objected to him doing it. Or you, for that matter."

Sarek blinked. "I did not say you should." He hesitated. "But he does seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time there. At least of late."

Amanda screwed up her brow in puzzlement. "Well, stars above. You finally see what I've been seeing, albeit much later. Does this make me prescient, or you slow on the uptake?"

Sarek didn't reply and she sighed, contrite at teasing - or needling, it sometimes amounted to the same thing - her husband when he was too upset to respond. "So what, exactly, is inordinate?" she asked, curious. "For a Vulcan?"

Sarek rose abruptly. "It is of no matter. As you say, it is his right." He held out a hand, banishing his concern with renewed control. "Come, as neither of us has dined, let us find something to eat."

"No wonder I never understand you," Amanda complained as they walked down the stairs. "You never explain anything to me."

Sarek sighed. "That is not true."

"It is this time. Can it be you just don't know?" she asked.

"Amanda."

"All right, all right," she took his arm. "I won't nag. And I do love you anyway. Really."

"Illogical."

"But true. Insufferable as you are."

"Surely not," Sarek said, stung at this characterization. He looked down at his wife.

She laughed and leaned closer, hugging him. "Not to me, darling. Only not to me."

 _To be continued…_


	6. Chapter 6

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 6**

Up in the mountains, meditating deeply, a beginning breeze ruffled Spock's hair. He narrowed his eyes against the gritty sand it blew against his face, but he didn't leave his post high in the Llangons above his home. Across the desert Forge far below, he could see the lights of Shikahr, the stronghold of his clan, symbol of Vulcan leadership and governance. Beyond that, the faint winking of the navigation beacon warned of the forceshield above T'Pau's palace, where he had heard she had just refused a seat on the Federation High Council. Above him stretched the huge bowl of stars, notably brilliant due to Vulcan's thin air and moonless sky. On a calm night, nothing could be more conducive to meditation for Spock than the dual reminders of Vulcan's civilization, its wilder pre-Reform past, and the wider Federation presence that was both a part of Vulcan, and yet not fully accepted. Like him. Yet all were a part of him. He had so much to consider.

But the calm night was evidently not going to last and allow him to continue his meditations here. Not on this spot on the mountain, though he could see the skies were still showing clear and calm over Shikahr. The incipient breeze around him changed to a potent gust, blowing his bangs back from his forehead as he turned into the wind to gauge its strength. Then from further up the mountain came a roaring, as if some pilot far above in the atmosphere was goosing the throttle of a fuel propulsion craft. Spock knew it wasn't that but a katabatic wind. He scrambled to his feet, only to be knocked down to the ground as cold air rushed down from the mountain, setting off rockslides and flattening the mountain vegetation. Such winds were a not uncommon occurrence and danger in the area, particularly after a hot day was countered by the excessive cold of a clear mountain night. The cold air sank, all the more precipitously for the temperature differential, creating these sweeping winds that at this strength could move boulders as if they were spintassle plants. He was familiar with them, but this evening they seemed especially strong.

He lurched his way to shelter, repeatedly knocked off his feet, resorting to moving sideways against the gusts to present less of a target and even crawling in exposed spots, rather than risk being blown off the cliffs. Around him, nocturnal wildlife, prey normally invisible to the undiscerning eye in their native element, were abandoning caution and seeking cover indiscriminately too. But like Spock, they had eyes slitted against the gritty sand stirred up around them and had no eyes for anything but safe shelter.

He heard the traveler before he saw him, even under the roar of the wind. Ragged gasping breaths warned him there was a being in distress. He smelled him before seeing him, the trace of blood and other odors letting him know it was a Vulcan, a male. Nearly stumbled over the body collapsed on the trail, given his vision was reduced to slits, and even that obscured by driven swirls of sand and grit. Spock took in the stunned form, noted the bleeding temple from where a rock had caught him with an incapacitating blow. Spock rapidly felt arms and legs, ribs and spine for any breaks that would inhibit movement.

Finding none, he tried to raise the body, but the heavy weight was too much for Spock's lean frame to take far. He simply wasn't strong enough to carry an adult Vulcan male, and the terrain made it even more impossible. The man would have to move himself. With Spock's assistance, but Spock alone could not drag him. Frustrated, he shook the body, trying to rouse it. When that yielded no response, the extreme circumstances warranted a touch, mind to mind, with the impetus of his clan leader heritage behind it, expressing the urgency of the danger, demanding action.

 _We must move!_

That yielded a moan and a scrabbling response. With that improvement over the dead weight the body had been before, Spock got the elder Vulcan on his feet, both of them staggering. He led the way to his destination, threading through a crevasse, past tumbled slabs of stone too narrow for any of Vulcan's large predators to pass. It was tight enough for a Vulcan youth. Had the elder Vulcan been of a guardsman's stocky nature it might have been too tight. But they fitted through and came into a cave made from tumbled slabs. Spock pushed the elder onto a fractured slab that served well as a seat. He moved away with a familiarity born of long acquaintance with the surroundings and with Vulcan night vision. But while such vision served to guide one in a moonless night, it didn't provide enough distinction to examine and treat wounds.

Spock went to the back of the cave. Rummaging around shadows humped there, he soon produced a light. And then two. The enclosed cave soon revealed itself to be a habitation of some history. A bedroll had been laid against a slab across the room. Scant but serviceable supplies of food and water lined the far wall. Several lanterns soon made the cave light enough to see the occupants. Spock brought a lantern over by his visitor, a cup of water, and laid a packet beside him on the slab bench.

"I have some medical supplies," he said. "Nothing extensive. But enough to clean and bandage wounds."

The stranger cleared his throat of inhaled grit with a sip of the water, wiped his eyes to clear his vision, and then spoke. "I am in your debt—"

"Not at all."

The elder rubbed away the sand from his eyes and fully took in the figure opposite him. "But you risked your life for mine. And you are just a boy."

"I am 13.1 standard years," Spock said dismissively, crouching down to regard the bleeding brow. "I am concerned about your head wound. Perhaps you should staunch the bleeding." He held out an antiseptic pressure packet.

The elder Vulcan coughed out his lungs of additional grit and then drew a deep breath, visibly settling his systems. "It is of no matter. A glancing blow momentarily stunned me. I am not seriously injured." He applied the packet and then looked around the lighted cave, taking in the bedroll, the portable computer and reader lying on a stone table, the cached supplies. "You **live** here?"

"I stay here. At times. I am Spock."

Grey eyes regarded Spock steadily. "That name is known. You are Sarek's son."

"Affirmative. You are?"

The old man blinked. "Forgive me. I am Suchon."

Spock's gaze turned inward momentarily as he placed the name. "You teach metallurgy at the Science Academy."

"Yes. In better times. Well," he put a hand to his temple. "This is a distinction. I can tell my grandchildren my life was saved by the heir to Surak."

Spock raised a brow, dismissing this. "You might have awoken and sought shelter on your own," he said. "Regardless, the debt is mine. You were injured on our lands."

"Not at all. This trail through the Llangons has had free passage to all since Surak's peace. And the Llangon Nature Preserve has been open to wanderers since your great grandfather's time. Your family is not responsible for the injuries of those who risk its known dangers."

"Perhaps not, but I believe I owe you guesting rite now." Spock turned away, rummaged in his cache of supplies. "My amenities are minimal. But I have water or juice. Or I can offer you tea. There is time while the storm blows itself out."

"Tea would be quite welcome," Suchon admitted.

Spock added water to that remaining in the cup, heated it over a fuel tab stove and served the brewed tea with a packet of the Vulcan equivalent of shortbread.

"Only one cup?" Suchon noted.

"As I said, minimal."

"You don't often have visitors," Suchon remarked.

"Most who come to the Llangons do so for meditation or appreciation of its natural beauty, activities best served alone."

"Agreed."

"I would offer you communications, but I have none with me."

"My injury is not serious. But will not your father be concerned?" When Spock did not reply, he added, "Given the storm?"

"Such momentary disturbances are common in the Llangons at certain seasons. This one was somewhat stronger than normal. But they are not too dangerous, provided one takes cover with alacrity. I encounter them frequently."

"Frequently."

Spock's eyes narrowed at the perceived criticism. "I passed my Kahs Wan at the usual time. I **also** have free passage." Spock raised a brow. "One does not traverse the Llangons expecting a tamed environment. This is not Shikahr's Federation Plaza."

"No. Quite."

Spock drew a breath. "While we await the cessation of the storm, do you require anything further?"

"Negative. Again, I am in debt to your hospitality."

"Then if you will forgive me, I have some schoolwork to attend to." Spock turned to his netbook. Suchon settled into meditation.

The wind outside roared and moaned. The hissing sound of sand and grit against the rocks was soporific, conducive to meditation, if less conducive for study than sleep. The cave was well protected from wind and storm, and even to a certain extent from cold, the sun heated rocks giving off a thermal effect in the night. Suchon rested in mediation. Spock's eyes eventually closed over his netbook as the storm raged outside.

xxx

Sarek came back from his meditations to find his wife not reading, as was her usual habit before sleeping. Instead she was standing on the balcony, gaze directed upward. Sarek came up behind her, close enough to feel her warmth. "You are shivering," he said. "Come in, Amanda. The night air is too cold for you."

"Look at that," Amanda said.

Sarek looked up to the Xhansashar Peak. A stream of cloud, part ice crystals, part sand and grit, was being scoured off the mountaintop by the wind, forming a purple tail in the darkening ochre sky.

"It is a common phenomenon," Sarek said. "The storm is local. It is not a sandstorm that will move here, or present a large lengthy disturbance or area of destruction. It is essentially just the normal radiational cooling as night falls, somewhat exacerbated due to the temperature differential."

"But Spock is up there. In it."

"Negative. He has not the equipment to move so far up the mountain. He will not be so high. Recall that he is also limited to how far he can move on foot, and still be back in the morning for school."

"He's high enough. And those winds move down slope. If I'm chilled here, he must be freezing on the mountain."

"He would have taken shelter. My wife, Spock understands how to survive in the Llangons."

"I hate this. My child is out there."

"If he were in severe distress, we would know."

"He didn't take communications. None of you do, when you are on this 'back to nature' kick."

"We would still know," Sarek said, more firmly than he in fact believed. He wasn't sure how much of their bond was functional, but he did know his son was alive. And he sensed nothing amiss. "My wife, your distress is pointless. He is not on the peak, but far below, and most certainly under shelter. He will be home for breakfast."

"He had better be. Though I'm not sure how I can face him, given how upset I am with him worrying me like this."

"Worry is pointless."

"Who had that boy, you or me?" she challenged.

Sarek flicked a brow. "Naturally, you bore him. I have helped raise him."

"Raised him to risk his life for your precious traditions."

"Amanda, Spock must demonstrate that he follows Vulcan tradition. His position does require it."

"The more he sacrifices for that position, the less I believe it is worth it."

"That is Spock's choice."

"Is it?" she asked. "Is it really? If he made a decision otherwise, would you support him?"

"He hasn't," Sarek said.

"Not my question," Amanda countered, and giving the Llangons a last look, turned back into the Fortress.

And Sarek didn't choose to elaborate his answer.

xxx

Sometime before dawn, the roaring of the wind outside slowed to a moan and then died. Suchon stirred.

Spock had fallen asleep over his netbook, one arm sprawled out as if reaching to extinguish the lamp, his head pillowed on his hunched shoulder. But as Suchon rose the boy came instantly to his feet, eyes wary, and hands at ready before he blinked and recognized his guest. "Forgive me. One needs to be cautious in the mountains."

"I believe the storm is over," Suchon observed.

"Yes." Spock raised his head, eyes closed a moment, like a hunting dog testing the air, and then brushed off his clothes. "It is safe enough for the moment. I will escort you to the trail head." He turned out the lanterns, scrutinized the long extinguished fuel tab for any stray sparks, and wrapped up the remaining shortbread. "I believe we can depart."

They were silent as they walked through the clear night to the head of the trail down to Shikahr, the route that had suffered the passage of armies in ancient times. Spock was pensive, more than a little weary, but scrupulously polite as to seeing his guest's safe passage. He paused at a spot where the rocky trail widened. "There should be no serious obstacles from here to the guards' post. The footing can be uncertain, but there are usually few rockfalls. Also, predators generally seldom come so low. None should bother you on this journey. Make sure you are noted by the guards. They will be checking off visitors after a storm such as that."

"You aren't returning?"

Spock's face was ungiving. "Negative."

"But to go back up the mountaiin. Night predators who have not fed become more dangerous before dawn."

Spock shook his head minutely in a Vulcan negative, a slight jerk of his chin to the left, his lips curving imperceptibly. "I have no concerns."

"There are the lematya."

"With the advent of the storm, and the fleeing game, they have eaten well."

"You cannot be sure. You should-"

"These are my lands," Spock said with ragged patience, tired and eager to be rid of this visitor, to meditate, which he'd been unwilling to do with a stranger in his cave, and to sleep for an hour or two more. "T'Len is there," he tilted his head. "Two hour's hike away, sleeping off a full belly, with her two cubs. Sashen, her mate, is some thousands of yards just above her. He also killed and ate. T'Vronk is in her hunting grounds to the west, also well fed. Laurissa is nearest, just a half hour's hike, but she fed yesterday. She is still asleep in her den, with her mate. You can be assured of safety."

"But how do you know this?" Suchon said.

"How do I?" Spock asked, frustrated and impatient, "But of course I -" then his eyes sheeted as if he had given something away. He straightened into formal and repressive lines, as if he were Sarek himself. He spoke with pompous intent, as if to belie his years. "As I said, these are my lands. I know the local predators. Naturally."

"But …where they are, and how they have fed… How **can** you know this?"

"The trail is there," Spock said forbiddingly.

"But you **do** know, don't you?" Suchon asked, with a trace of wonder. "You **know**."

Spock raised his chin slightly, well and truly caught. He said nothing.

" _Xhanzrei,"_ Suchon said, almost reverently. "The heir to Surak, indeed. A legend out of time."

"Go," said Spock in emphatic mode, furious with himself, pointing to the path, uncaring that he was decades from being able to give such orders to an adult.

Suchon nodded and turned. "Yes, my lord."

Spock followed the elder's passage with his eyes, a trickle of dread inching into his veins as he wondered what he might have initiated. He did not think Suchon would complain about his disrespectful order. In fact the elder seemed too willing to have received it. Rather, Spock wondered if he had revealed something that he should have kept to his own counsel. "I didn't know," he whispered. "Have I erred in assumptions without data?" His eyes followed the foreshortened figure moving down the mountain, small but suddenly growing in potential menace.

"Say nothing," Spock demanded, even though he knew Suchon was well out of hearing. "Nothing!"

Only the wind, whistling skeptically among the stones, answered him. It had not even an echo in reply to reassure him.

 _To be continued…_


	7. Chapter 7

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 7**

" _You have become much known among our people, Spock. Almost a legend." - T'Pring, Amok Time_

For some days, Suchon did say nothing. Not because of Spock's adjuration – he had been out of hearing. But because he half disbelieved the thing himself. Not just Spock's last astonishing telepathic reveal, but the whole surreal encounter. The boy appearing out of the darkness and the wind. The cave. There were stories of ghost armies along that ancient pass in the Llangons, all felled by Surak's clan in legendary battles. Why not a ghost boy, to an elderly disabled Vulcan, one felled by a stone and hallucinating a rescue? It would be such a convenient way of dismissing the incident.

And yet he had been rescued. There had been the bandage on his head. The taste of rose laced shortbread on his tongue. Spock had not been a hallucination. He was prosaically real. Suchon confirmed that, went a little out of his way one morning, to watch Spock leaving one of his classes at the Science Academy, younger than his peers, but still just a flesh and blood teen, with that same netbook under his arm.

He thought back to Spock's overly patient, prosaic listing of the nearby lematya and their condition, as if humoring an overly tedious guardian, and he still found himself shaking his head in awe. The boy had been aware, without sensors or scanners, known from his own mind, unequivocally, the major predators in the nearby area, knew them intimately, by name, with their location and condition.

Of course the affinity between the clan of Surak and their herald was legendary. Ancient rumors had held that it was a true affinity, a kinship beyond all conventional knowing. One that had allowed the clan of Surak to hold the predator filled area of the Llangons with relative impunity, back in ancient times when Vulcans were both predator and prey to the lematya. Both had claimed Shikahr and its mountain fastnesses. And among all the clans which had striven to take and hold Shikahr, only Surak's had prevailed in this valuable but dangerous environment, allegedly due to this affinity. As a modern Vulcan, Suchon had naturally regarded those stories as the stuff of legends. He had never expected to meet a living personification of it, nor have that legend drag him out of danger to safety.

The question that bothered him was, who else knew?

From the unguarded look of dismay on the boy's face, Spock had either let slip a secret, or he had not realized the significance of his ability until Suchon himself had revealed his understandable shock. The question was, what responsibility did Suchon have, now that he did know? He'd been uneasy at first at the notion of so young a boy so frequently resident in the mountains that he kept a camp, probably one of many such refuges, scattered along the pass. True there were those of the ruling classes that still adhered to the old rites, practiced the Kahs Wan. But even that was a ritualized, heavily formal event, suitably monitored to prevent too many deaths. Those of clans other than Surak's were now allowed more than one attempt at the trial to claim mastery, though Spock, as befit a true son of Surak, had been required to pass his on the first attempt. Suchon was not sure how much he agreed with that rite. He'd had no son to require that decision or that risk, nor was he high enough in clan hierarchy that it would be considered a requirement for his sons. But there was a huge difference, even to his mind, between a monitored Kahs Wan rite where the participants could quit and call for rescue if they were failing, and a teen-aged boy living in a mountain cave surrounded by all its dangers.

Did Sarek know? That was Suchon's question. Even if he did, Suchon believed Spock did not belong solely to Sarek. Spock had been sealed to Council at three, the presumptive heir to Surak. Such an heir belonged to all of Vulcan. He was their property. The legitimate concern of all. Suchon suspected there were not many of the clan of Surak who had ever manifested such legendary gifts. Should not the holder of them be preserved and kept safe from perhaps adolescent exploits? Should not the **Council** be so informed?

He meditated long on this and eventually decided it was best if he at least **spoke** with Sarek.

xxx

Sarek stared down at his steepled fingers, just out of pickup range, rather than across the viewscreen to his caller, while struggling for a Vulcan control that lately this individual in particular had made it difficult for him to maintain. He felt suddenly short of breath, in spite of his attempting physiological regulation of that function. The tension of holding onto all of his control, diplomatic, social, emotional, physiological, before this militaristic human suddenly made his heart pound past Sarek's ability to easily regulate. He struggled for the physiological mastery even while trying to keep some attention on his visitor. And he felt it strayed just out of his grasp, his heart pounding with a desire to move, to act on his frustrations. But his duty forced him to master himself.

He had no choice, whatever he might personally choose. Amanda, in her desire to save Spock from hardship, failed to understand how her son was just the latest in a long line of those sacrificed to Vulcan's demands. Including himself.

For Sarek of Vulcan might on the surface be considered to live a privileged life, but he had all of Vulcan's many clans to govern and hold to Surak's precepts. As well as himself. Given the warrior that lay beneath the veneer of Vulcan civilization that was not entirely an easy thing. Humans thought of Vulcans as devoid of emotions, creatures of logic. And so Vulcans strove to portray themselves.

But it had been only five thousand years since Surak's time, a blink in evolution. Only a thousand or so less since Vulcan had taken to the stars in their own sometimes violent colonizing period, the rituals of their society still imperfect and hardly universal, leading to conflict with their Romulan cousins. And the Rigellians and Orions were also Vulcanoids. Vulcans were essentially the same passionate creatures as before and not as unlike other Vulcanoids as supposed, indeed having proved so passionate that only Surak's Precepts and the Disciplines had saved them from annihilation, by turning them to control and logic. As he must hold his people. And his son, whatever his human mother thought.

But even holding the clans of Vulcan to maintain Surak's Precepts was minor compared to leading an entire coalition of alien worlds that looked to Vulcan for representation and guidance, before and after the Vulcan Alliance's merger with the United Federation of Planets. The UFP had been largely a coalition of human worlds and colonies, with an alien minority before Vulcan and its Alliance joined the Federation. That joining itself had been fraught with conflict. Not everyone in the Alliance believed the Federation fully accepted the alien presence that now wrestled for majority in voting patterns, or gave it nearly equal weight against Terra and her many colonies. Nor were all in the Federation of the belief that the Alliance was necessarily a good partner for the formerly human dominated Federation, combined assets of trade, technology and military strength aside.

Indeed, Sarek wondered about this himself at times.

And militarily, Sarek himself was of two minds regarding the Federation. Vulcans believed in defense. Sarek was even prepared to engage in warfare with Romulus, if no other alternative would keep Vulcan and its allies secure. He would fight, lead his people in such conflict, if not with perfect logic, than with ruthless efficiency and precision. With the Romulans on their doorstep it had been a necessity for millennia. Technological advancements to stay ahead of the Romulans, and thus prevent war, he considered one of the necessities of Vulcan science.

And he thought he had recently demonstrated the results of that proficiency and its restrained use to Admiral Longworth, albeit to keep to a tacit truce on the Neutral Zone. And he thought he had convinced him that such restraint could work with Romulans. But now back at Starfleet Headquarters, perhaps under influence from others in Fleet leadership, and apparently from other Federation members of the Alliance, Longworth had _changed his mind_.

The quixotic caprice of that particularly human phrase had long proved to irritate a logical Vulcan like Sarek unspeakably.

Plus the fact that, regardless of the Federation's publicly stated goals of peace, to Sarek's Surak-trained philosophies, the Federation, or at least their Starfleet, often appeared to believe more in offense than defense. And in the value of a loaded phaser bank and a bloody nose as a first and best politic calling card. He had been trying to explain to Longworth, yet again, why this was not an advisable tactic with the Romulans given Vulcan's experience with them.

But apparently in addition to Starfleet and the Federations' jingoism, there were those in the Alliance who agreed with Starfleet and had communicated with that body. Sarek was unsurprised by this. The Alliance was a very diverse coalition, who was not all in it for pacifistic philosophies. Some were more in keeping with Federation tenets of warfare, or even more so, than with Vulcan's preferred pacifism. Were they not almost equally suspicious of humans, Sarek might find it hard to rein them in when the Federation was in a war mongering phase. But at least some of them were on Fleet's side in this, and so Longworth had called to inform him.

Or harangue him. The pose of concession to Vulcan conventions, the façade of appeasing diplomat, which the Admiral had so unsuccessfully adopted before had been dropped in the face of what Longworth apparently considered new evidence and constituent defections from Vulcan leadership. "Your Alliance is falling apart over this issue, Sarek. The Tellurites agree with us on our Klingon strategies. The Andorians are inclined to give us the benefit of the doubt on the Romulan issue."

"Admiral, Vulcan does not begrudge the Federation its militarism in relation to the Klingon threat," Sarek said patiently. "You have the experience and are thus the best judge of those tactics. The Federation's proximity to the Klingons' home world and colonies make it more of an issue to Federation than to Vulcan interests. But the Romulan threat is another matter. Here Vulcans have had the experience and the history."

"History be damned," Longworth thundered, steely eyed. "It's what is happening **now** that is at issue. The Romulan Empire borders not just Vulcan and Alliance Territory but a segment of space patrolled by the Federation. And it is there that we're seeing incursions and altercations. Some in Starfleet consider that for all practical purposes we are at war with the Romulan Star Empire."

Sarek suppressed a wince at the word. "Federation saber rattling and encroachment are creating conflict with the Romulans," Sarek countered. "They are responding in kind. Your provocative actions have ramped up militarism by the Romulans even on the Vulcan side of the Neutral Zone. These encounters and incidents with Federation warships have been triggering the Romulans to a new military buildup against what they perceive is a new foe."

"Sarek, you should welcome this situation," Longworth urged. "We can split their efforts into defending two fronts."

"Negative," Sarek said, steely in turn. "Vulcan has had to fortify its side of the border in response. While at the same time assuming as little a provocative stance as possible, not to stir the Romulans into an all out war footing on our side of the Neutral Zone. Vulcan has kept an uneasy cease fire with Romulus for millennia, due largely to their less facile technological development. It is imperative that you take guidance to behave in a constrained manner. Romulans respect strength. But the Romulan response to perceived aggression is quite predictable."

"The best defense is a good offense. The best time to take on an enemy is before they have completed that buildup of forces."

"Possessing force, Admiral," Sarek said, "is well. But does not necessitate using it unnecessarily and parading it unprovoked before Romulan outposts. A too overt show of force – these altercations and incidents of which you speak - will incite the Romulans to further hostilities. "

"Unprovoked!"

"There **have** been incursions on the Federation side," Sarek said stolidly, "on Romulan space."

"We've had threats. We're responded."

"Which has led to the loss of life."

"And we've retaliated in kind."

"Starfleet's provocations have further escalated the situation. If you respond to armed phasers as if it were a template to war –"

"How can it be anything else! We have lost lives, yes, personnel and even ships!"

"You are proving that you are indeed eager for conquest and war, in which they may be only too pleased to engage." Sarek sat back. "That is not what Vulcan wishes in a Federation partner. Nor indeed what I had expected."

"We have responded to force with force in kind. I believe an increased military presence, even a strike force, can curtail future incursions. The combined forces of the Federation, Vulcans included, squeezing them between two fronts, can take this threat down for good. The time to do it is now. The Alliance must put this option before the Federation High Council. Starfleet and Terra will back you. Surely you see that this war is necessary and right."

 _Rather it will stir Vulcanoid passions_ , Sarek reflected wearily _, on both sides of the Neutral Zone_. The Vulcanoid races had an atavistic regard for their Romulan cousins. They supported the truce the Neutral Zone protected. Sarek could predict that a major Starfleet war with Romulus, which could conceivably be regarded as a human war against Vulcanoids, could conceivably turn Vulcans, Rigelians, even Orions against the Federation. Regardless if the Tellurites and Andorians supported it, if it were seen as a result of humanoid aggression rather than Romulan, against Vulcanoids, it would make Sarek's Alliance even harder to keep together and in the Federation.

But Sarek was not inclined to advise Longworth on the Vulcanoid nature of Romulans. The Federation still seemed unaware of that. And relations could be tense enough between the Alliance and the Federation without them perceiving those long past connections between Romulus and Vulcan. Sarek didn't so much intend to keep that hidden as to not advertise it. But as Romulans had both Vulcan abilities and Vulcan passions, they would not take a Federation threat lying down. Plus, they could only regard close Vulcan ties to the Federation as possibly a sign of Vulcan weakness and thus an additional reason for war.

Sarek could only credit the present Romulan leadership as being wise enough not to have already committed itself into a two front war between the Federation and Vulcan. Clearly, according to the Neutral Zone Patrol and intelligence sources, they had been considering it, and for the moment, rejected it to go solely after these gadfly Starfleet incursions. But for Sarek, this was becoming a difficult and somewhat duplicitous balance, subtly regarrisoning Vulcan to contain a Romulan threat without stirring off the Romulans, while at the same time urging Starfleet to tone down the Federation's more overt jingoist posturing. Failure on his part to manage this could set off a Romulan firestorm on both sides of the Neutral Zone, sunder the Vulcan Alliance that his ancestors had maintained for millennia, and set even Vulcan against the Federation.

If he were not a supremely disciplined individual, he might have occasionally succumbed to frustration, fury, even despair. But he had been bred to this leadership. Somehow, he must balance these competing factions without allowing a war to begin under his watch.

"Vulcan is not interested in a war with Romulus," Sarek pronounced. "Nor do we believe it is desirable or even inevitable at this time. We have maintained a peace with Romulus for millennia. I continue to believe one is possible, if managed properly. We have hoped and continue to hope that the Romulans will develop into a society that pursues peace rather than war. Indeed for some time we have been aware of signs that this might be so." Sarek raised a brow. "But Vulcan has assumed that the Federation has also held that philosophy. If this is not the case, I will speak to the Federation Undersecretary about what has so changed in the Starfleet arm of the Federation. And reconsider Vulcan's place in it."

Longworth glowered at this take down. But he had no great willingness to bring Federation diplomats down on Starfleet on a potential breach with a major Federation ally. Starfleet had thought that with some Alliance members agreeing to ramp up against Romulus, and a few convenient incidents, that Longworth could convince Sarek to capitulate. To lend forces, and Starfleet believed a withheld Vulcan technology, to Starfleet in response to a threat against keeping Sarek's Alliance together. Now that this tactic failed, Longworth retreated, to consult with Fleet and plan a new strategy. He proposed his Plan B.

Sarek heard him out and agreed to a coalition to "study" responses to the Romulan threat. He hoped some wiser heads would prevail in the study group. But he suspected Longworth intended to overly populate it with Alliance ambassadors who favored conflict. That Starfleet would use it to gather intelligence to further fracture the Alliance. It would be another contentious meeting, but better than agreeing to war. He got Longworth off the comm, hoping Starfleet would at least tone down their incursions and guard against further altercations on their side of the Neutral Zone during this regrouping period. At least peace, and not war, might prevail another day.

Sitting back, having just closed this contentious subspace communication with the Starfleet Admiralty, he was not in the best frame of mind. He could have used fifteen minutes of mediation, and a cup of tea. In fact, he was seriously considering whether his wife's schedule and his could align enough for him to take that tea at home. His wife, while far from a diplomat, usually had something cogent to say that he often found both relevant and helpful. Even failing that, her mere presence and humor was usually a tonic. Sarek eyed his schedule, thinking of likely adjustments, and was reaching for the communications panel again when an aide hovered in his doorway and announced an unscheduled visitor.

Sarek let out a breath and after a moment of control agreed to meet.

The Vulcan who entered was not personally known to Sarek, though he recognized him as a Science Academy instructor, a member of a clan that had traditionally dug for metals and run forges. Millennia ago, Surak had repeatedly raided and attacked this clan for their goods. But they had been one of Surak's first allies when he had turned to peace. And since then, it had been a close trading partner for metal goods, since Sarek's clan built ships but had never mined raw materials. But all that was in the hands of competent industrialists. Sarek could not understand what possible relevant business this individual could have with him. "You want something of me?" he asked, as politely as he could, given his desire to have the interview ended. He gestured the man to a chair.

"Somewhat the reverse," Suchon said, gingerly seating himself, regarding Sarek with not a little awe. "I am in your debt."

"I don't understand," Sarek said, steepling his fingers again, the better to control an incipient impatience.

"Rather, your son's debt," Suchon admitted.

Sarek flicked a brow but forbore to repeat his confusion.

"Some nights ago, I was traversing the Llangons," Suchon continued. "There was a storm. I was knocked unconscious by a falling rock. Spock revived me, took me to a place of safety, and later escorted me down the mountain."

Sarek tilted his head slightly, the Vulcan equivalent of a shrug. "I am sure he did no more than any individual would have done, giving aid to someone in need. It was a logical act. There is no debt incumbent."

"So he said." Suchon replied, answering Sarek's unspoken question.

Sarek frowned, still confused, if relieved Spock had handled the situation in a Vulcan way, with a Vulcan attitude. Why then, was this man implying any debt?

"Never-the-less, I received a service, and I believe I should render a service in return. For a situation perhaps unknown."

"What situation is this?" Sarek asked, with studied patience.

"Sarek, I confess I was concerned that so young a teen was in the Llangons, at night, entirely alone."

Sarek's mouth set. "Spock earned the freedom of the Forge at his Kahs Wan."

"That is a traditional way to look at it," Suchon acknowledged. "But given he appeared to be, in some respects, living there, I could not fail to be concerned-"

"He is **not** living there," Sarek said with some heat.

Suchon sat a little straighter, but continued. "He had quite a well prepared camp in a cave. He has been sleeping there, working there. I gather it was not a sole retreat, but that there were perhaps others."

"None of this requires your concern or intervention," Sarek fairly bristled at this interference in his family, albeit with Vulcan control.

"It is a predator filled environment. I expressed that to him. He also was unconcerned. Supremely unconcerned."

"He has been trained," Sarek half rose, signaling the interview at an end. "I fail to see how this-"

"It is not merely his presence in the Llangons," Suchon said doggedly, not rising from his chair. Now that he was here, terrified or not before this august clan leader and Council Head, he was determined to speak his piece. "When I expressed my concern, he said something truly astonishing to me. He told me the location of nearby predators and their condition. He knew them by their name. When they had killed or fed, and of their mates and cubs. He **knew** them intimately. As if they were in his heart, in his mind."

Sarek said nothing, sinking back in his chair, half frozen, in no little astonishment himself, however outwardly impassive were his facial features.

"I am not sure if you knew — or wish this known -"

Sarek's eyes cut back to the elder Vulcan as if this were a threat.

But Suchon seemed unaware of that, babbling on, at least for a Vulcan, as if determined to have his piece said. "Spock seemed to realize he had perhaps spoken out of turn when he saw my uncontrolled reaction to his statement. Such a reaction was remiss of me. But I, like most Vulcans, had thought these ancient gifts only legend."

"I still do not understand how this relates to some imagined debt," Sarek said.

"Perhaps, with such knowledge, the risk of Spock's stays in the Llangons **is** mitigated to a certain extent. But balanced against that – it is an astonishing gift, even for the heir to Surak. It should require an extra effort to safeguard for Vulcan posterity, should it not?" Suchon eyed Sarek appealingly. "If you were not aware of it – if he were not aware of its rarity – then perhaps my debt is repaid, in informing you. **That** was my sole purpose in wishing to speak to you."

"I now understand," Sarek said, relieved to have this unpleasant business concluded.

Suchon rose. "I don't wish Spock's rights to the Forge to be curtailed. But… he is still a very young child, is he not? At least in many respects. And the Forge has dangers even for mature Vulcans, whose probability increases upon frequency of residence." He touched his forehead, where a bruise was fading. "His presence there is not at all as proctored as a Kahs Wan trial. Perhaps if someone were to speak to him, someone with authority, and with knowledge of his gifts and how rare and important they are to Vulcan—"

"Yes," Sarek rose in dismissal. "I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. You may consider your perceived debt…cancelled." He said it with heavy meaning, gave the educator the Vulcan salute, signifying the interview at an end.

Suchon nodded and let the suddenly appearing aide usher him from the office, inwardly shuddering. He determined to make no more visits to the Llangons. The heirs to Surak were too unnerving, even for Vulcans.

"No contacts for ten minutes," Sarek ordered his aides.

"Sofet has requested- "

"Ten minutes," Sarek ordered. "No contacts until then."

Sarek steepled his fingers a third time into a meditation pose. In some distant phase of his mind, he heard his wife's merry voice saying, " _The third time's the charm!"_ He willed it so even as he fixed his gaze on them, even as his heart raced so the blood pounded in his ears. He forced his cardiac rhythm back to a resting level, thinking of all the problems he was facing, from the Federation and those that Spock had caused him. Was causing him. And now this.

He had been regretting Spock's frequent visits to the Forge, knowing if somewhat discounting the dangers, given Spock was well trained. And had wanted to curtail at least the more recent frequency of his visits for some time, without quite knowing how. Technically Spock had the Freedom of the Forge. But few if any children extended that earned license to include regular solitary all night rambles. Spock had often gone off every few weeks. But of late it had become every other night. A night at home, a night on the Forge. He was always home for breakfast. At first he had been home for dinner, before taking off. Now he had often been leaving directly after returning from the Academy. His wife was furious over this increased frequency, but she had so far largely expressed that in private, given Sarek had long insisted that Spock be allowed the traditional freedom. Instead, she had become tight lipped about her dissatisfaction, even if she no longer argued with him. It was creating a rift in his bond. But even he had become disconcerted and uneasy over Spock's new habit.

But given tradition, he had no idea how to stop it.

Technically, if Spock had been in secondary school, he could have more say, if not over the practice, than over the frequency, because Spock would not have been considered to have fully mastered the Disciplines. Mastery of those held sway over any other Vulcan pursuit. But now that Spock was at the Academy, that argument was invalid given that milestone was allegedly behind him. Not that Sarek considered that Spock had fully mastered the Disciplines, no more than any Vulcan could. It was a lifelong struggle. But still he would have had some parental authority. Of course, technically he had all the parental authority he needed. But he would have to have some reason sufficient to counterbalance Spock's right and tradition. And Sarek could think of none that could violate such a cornerstone of Vulcan tradition.

Spock had been careful to wait until he'd well established himself at the Academy before increasing his Forge visitations to this level. His standing there was excellent. Sarek could not claim these rambles were resulting in any dereliction of duties.

But they were dangerous. The Llangons were full of hazards, weather, terrain, wildlife. This astonishing and probably mistaken claim of Suchon's aside. Nor had Sarek known of this alleged ability. The claim bothered him intensely. Yes, it was an ancient legend in the line of Surak. But Sarek had thought it as much a pretty fiction as Suchon had. Not that he doubted the elder Vulcan's sincerity. Sarek was not much of a telepath himself, but he could reckon when someone was telling an untruth. And Suchon's relating of Spock's reaction was sincere. Nor was it unlike Spock to mistake an ability of his as common for all Vulcans. Due to his confused heritage, his intensive training in psi, and his focused, intense education that left him little time for common interaction with peers, the boy had little more idea what was a standard Vulcan trait than a talent out of legend.

Spock had shown a mischievous, not entirely truthful side in his early boyhood that had left Sarek with a niggle of doubt. But on the other hand, his psi skills had been reckoned prodigious by the healers. He was a throwback; his human genes recessive enough that many of the ancient Vulcan gifts of their line had come out in full dominance, overwhelming healers and Sarek alike.

If Suchon's assertions were true, Sarek didn't like the notion that Spock was attuned to the Vulcan wildlife on the Forge, regardless if it might make Spock safer in some ways. For did it not leave him vulnerable in others, to those wild passions and drives? Spock's shields had never been entirely equal to his sensitivities. This could be a truly dangerous vulnerability, a threat wholly apart from the physical dangers of the Forge.

Sarek's steepled fingers had moved to his temples as he wrestled with this new and unwelcome problem, so deep in thought he didn't notice the door opening nor the exclamation of Sofet.

"Sarek? Are you ill?"

Sarek sat back, and with an effort at control removed his hands from his aching temples. "I am well enough," he said with studied neutrality.

"I believe not entirely. Where is the logic in denying it? What has occurred?" The elder Vulcan approached, concern plain. Sofet was distantly related to Sarek. He knew him well and noted the distinct air of strain. Given Sarek's father was dead, that he had long been virtually estranged from T'Pau and that Sarek had no siblings, he was one of Sarek's nearer relations. He believed himself justified in expressing concern.

Sofet had seldom seen his clan leader more at a loss, and it puzzled him. True Sarek had a difficult career. But he had been bred to it. And Sofet had never seen him daunted in that area, had watched him stand off, successful, against Council and Federation for decades. Nor could Sofet imagine anything in Sarek's personal life to newly distress him. True, T'Pau had never accepted his wife into the clan, but that had been an issue for years, and it could hardly be of sudden import. And as for a wife, Sarek was well and truly bonded, as anyone who met him with the Lady Amanda had related. And while Spock had been an occasional trial, now the boy was grown, and at the Science Academy, years ahead of when even the most gifted Vulcans would qualify, most never doing so. "What can it be?" he asked.

An aide came through and Sofet quickly threw an arm across the doorway. "No interruptions," he said tersely. He followed the aide out the door."Who was just with Sarek?"

"A metallurgist, from the Science Academy."

"What did he want?"

The aide raised a brow. "I have no idea."

Sofet went back to Sarek's office, even more puzzled. What could such a person have to do with Sarek? And it must have been personal – the Science Academy – that could mean Spock, or Amanda. But if Amanda were injured or even upset, Sarek would not need some stranger to tell him. And he would have already been out the door to her.

"Is it Spock?" he asked, sitting across from Sarek. "My understanding is that he is doing well at the Academy. And his field is Astrophysics, correct? You deferred computer science until he gained more maturity."

"Maturity," Sarek echoed with dry irony.

Sofet sat back. "I can't believe Spock is not doing well at his studies. What I have heard—"

"It is not an academic issue," Sarek said.

Sofet wondered if Spock had lost control and fought someone, perhaps over a slight to his mother. But that had not occurred for years. It seemed unlikely at the Academy. "Sarek. Consider. Perhaps I can help."

Sarek eyed him. "You have sons, Sofet."

Sofet sat back, nodding. "Two."

"They hike the Forge?"

Sofet raised a brow, confused. "On occasion."

"Specify as to occasion."

"I don't know precisely the intervals. Perhaps a few times a year."

Sarek raised a brow and sat back, fingers straying to rub his temples again. "Spock has been spending an inordinate amount of time on the Forge. First a night every tenday, but increasing in frequency till now he is spending every other night on the Forge."

Sofet tilted his head, considering this with Vulcan practicality. "Interesting. Is it affecting his work?"

"Negative. At present."

"It **is** somewhat dangerous. And it must be exhausting, in some respects. Why is he doing it?"

"I have no idea. According to the metallurgist, Suchon, he has made a home for himself there in the mountains. Perhaps one of many." Seeing Sofet's confusion Sarek added, "Suchon was injured by falling rock in a storm. Spock rescued him and took him to one of his camps."

"Commendable enough." Sofet hesitated. "But you knew that Spock was frequenting the Forge before you saw Suchon. There must be something else."

"Suchon claims that Spock is… attuned with the local predators. That he is psionically aware of their location, condition, etc."

Sofet's eyes widened. "Indeed. That is a …"

"Story out of legend. As Suchon put it."

"And now the legend has a basis in fact," Sofet marveled.

Sarek tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug, indicating some doubt. "By all his psi tutors' reports, Spock is an exceptionally sensitive telepath whose shielding can be considered fractional and inadequate in spite of the best training. I have been told the one goes along with the other. It is a hereditary recessive trait in the line."

"Like the legend," Sofet said.

"I had never considered the possibility of **that** legend manifesting in Spock. How could anyone, in these modern times?"

"You doubt it now, even after Suchon's testament?"

Sarek hesitated. "Spock has mastered the Disciplines. It is unlikely for him to put this forward as a fabrication. And to what purpose? And it is true this … trait, has been legend in the line of Surak. I never heard of a recent ancestor with it, nor heard Spock speak of it. But given his other abilities…it is perhaps actually true."

"And this concerns you?" Sofet asked, puzzled.

"How could it not?" Sarek rose with a whirl, testament to a lack of control. "I believe I have managed Spock's heritage from his mother. Even her influence. But this legacy from the past? To train a telepath whose excessive sensitivity is compromised by poor shielding has proven a trial to his tutors. Some have claimed it pre-Reform. And the influence to which he must be subjected, based upon this new allegation or claim. Perceptions of not just wild creatures or other Vulcans are a real issue. His future career will eventually involve aliens, warring factions, strife. Undisciplined, illogical beings. How can any Vulcan manage with such a handicap?"

"Surak did. He allegedly turned it into an asset."

"Surak is a legend in himself," Sarek said impatiently. "We are not children on a Kahs Wan training expedition listening under the stars to pre-Reform legends. How much of that history is fanciful rewriting for legends' sake to entertain or motivate pre-schoolers?"

Sofet sat back, brows raised. "Well, based on Spock's alleged abilities, perhaps not as much as once presumed."

"No child of this age should bear that burden."

"But he's doing well, Sarek. He's academically advanced. He's at the Science Academy."

"And spending every other night away from home, wandering in the mountains like the lematya he is now allegedly attuned with, sleeping in caves."

"Sarek, you can't believe he is overly influenced by that psionic awareness. He could not be succeeding at the Academy; he could not **think** logically, were that true."

"I know." Sarek stilled, drew a measured breath, and sank back into his chair. "But it still remains a concern. Even apart from this new information, I disliked these excessive expeditions on the Forge."

"Forbid them."

Sarek raised his head, brows raised in astonishment. "How can I? I have held him to Tradition. The Freedom of the Forge traditionally comes with mastery of certain skills. I cannot rescind my word." He brooded on that. "I now wonder if Spock's repeated visits there are in payment for such demands."

"But surely that cannot be the entire reason? I know little of Spock, but he does not seem petty."

"I have not asked his reasons."

Sofet sat back. "Really?"

Sarek bypassed that question. "And what reason could he possibly give for preferring to live as a homeless outcast and sleeping in a cave, rather than in his home?"

"But he has not entirely given up the Fortress for the Forge, surely? You do see him at home?"

"He used to attend the evening meal before leaving," Sarek said meditatively. "He has largely ceased doing that. But he always arrives for breakfast, before leaving for the Academy. I believe that is so that his mother is assured of his safety."

Sofet let out a breath. "Sarek, you have two choices. You can curtail or forbid these Forge excursions outright for whatever reason you choose. You are still parent; you have the ultimate authority to order him regardless of tradition."

"With Spock? There is no disregard of tradition in our relationship. Tradition rules."

"Then you can discuss this with him and seek to understand his reasons for this behavior."

"And if his reasons have no rationale, but are entirely emotionally based?"

Sofet's forehead creased in puzzlement. "But we all traverse the Forge partly for emotive purposes. Yes, logically, it's considered an aide to meditation and connection with our Disciplines. But the need for those Disciplines that is quenched by the Forge, is undeniably emotive in part. It is all part of the methodology to control emotion."

Sarek's eyes cut to Sofet's. "Your corollary therefore is that Spock's emotions are so all encompassing that he requires such frequent Forge visits."

"I implied no such thing."

"Logic would indicate –"

"Perhaps. But he is very young, Sarek. His mastery of the Disciplines is years ahead of other Vulcan youth. That might add reasons for his affinity to the Forge. And his heritage links him to the Forge. His home is essentially on the doorstep of the Forge – unlike others he can merely step out of his gate and be in the foothills. He has more access, and perhaps more reason than most to traverse there. You may not have any outright reason to forbid his Forge treks, at least in their entirety. But considerations of risk, safety, health, prudence, dictate some curtailment, surely. That can be communicated to Spock as logical concerns. I would not wish a son of mine to spend every other night alone in the Llangons at less than 15 standard years, even if he had the ability to sense the locations of lematya in his range. And I have two sons; you have only the one. Consider if Spock, rather than Suchon, had been the one disabled and exposed during that storm? "

"You need not belabor the obvious, Sofet. I understand that issue, only too well," Sarek said grimly. "It is never far from my thoughts."

"You must speak with him and address these concerns," Sofet met his clan leader's gaze, communicating conviction.

Sarek set his jaw and gave a terse Vulcan nod, outwardly in agreement. But Sofet marveled that in all his decades of association with the clan leader, he had never seen Sarek more reluctant at the prospect of meeting to discuss an issue with any other being.

 _To be continued…_

 _Note, re Sarek and warfare: "If there were a reason, my father is quite capable of killing. Logically and efficiently." - Spock, Journey to Babel_


	8. Chapter 8

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 8**

Now that he had made the decision, Sarek wasted little time to carry out that interview, regardless of his reluctance. He left word with the gate guards that Spock was to remain in the Fortress after returning home from school. When he was notified Spock had arrived, he left Council Keep to fly home. He could have ordered Spock to him there, but he would rather have this interview in private. "Spock. I would speak with you."

"Yes, sir."

Spock followed him to his office and stood before the desk, his face shuttered, obviously expecting some reprimand or discipline. And to Sarek's observation, clearly caring little what or why, and only thinking of getting through it and leaving. Again to his own pursuits.

Sarek gestured him to a chair. Spock took it, but his momentary surprise was once again replaced by shuttered sullenness. Clearly he now expected a lecture, rather than a discipline.

"I received a visit, "Sarek said, "From a recent acquaintance of yours. Suchon."

Spock reacted to this, a fleeting expression of unease crossing his face, a momentary shift of posture in his chair, before he stiffened both in control. "Indeed."

Sarek waited. It was a tactic useful with humans, who could so little bear silence that they often saved him the trouble of bringing up difficult points. Spock, however, was both Vulcan and even more reluctant to introduce painful subjects. He had no difficulty sitting under Sarek's scrutiny. And Sarek did scrutinize him, from crown to foot. There was more of a hollow in his temple, an additional leanness around jaw and frame. The boy was still more child than adolescent, his growth to full height not imminent. In spite of any mitigating growth spurt that would have given some reason for increased leanness, he had lost weight.

"He spoke to me of your encounter in the Llangons."

"I rendered such assistance as was logical," Spock said. "Nothing more."

"His fate could have been yours," Sarek said, "with perhaps no one nearby to render aid."

For a moment Spock did not react, not from control. Sarek perceived he was both stunned and relieved that this was Sarek's object, rather than another subject. "I do take care," he said with studied neutrality.

"Care taken does not always preclude danger."

Spock said nothing for a long moment, then tilted his head fractionally, the barest trace of a Vulcan shrug and said, "Does it matter?"

Sarek's brow rose in startlement. "What?"

Spock rose from his chair, "I will continue to be careful, Father."

"I have not dismissed you."

Spock remained, but did not regain his seat, his hands closing into fists on the chair before him, face closed.

"I would like to know," Sarek said, "the reason for these frequent visits to the Forge."

"I find the peace of the mountains conducive to meditation."

Sarek tilted his head at that. "The mountains are not peaceful. They are a scene of conquest and strife, both of our ancient history and manifest in present day in the existing wildlife."

"What **about** the existing wildlife, Father?" Spock said it softly, but it was almost a challenge.

Sarek was spared an answer by a bustle at the door, and Amanda entering.

"Sarek, -" she paused, taking in the charged scene, both of them staring at each other like two predators before imminent conflict. "Am I interrupting?"

Spock waited for his father to answer, but before Sarek could formulate one, Amanda fixated her gaze on her son, and let out a pent up breath. "Spock! If you turned sideways, I might miss seeing you! You are becoming positively gaunt." She turned to her husband. "Surely you can see that!"

"He has lost weight," Sarek conceded.

"Well, that does it. Spock, you are staying home tonight, and eating a good meal for once, and that goes for the rest of the week too!" When Spock shifted as if in protest, she overrode him. "And **don't** give me any Vulcan backchat about tradition! It's obvious you haven't been eating properly, and I won't stand for it. You can just defer any further desert hikes until you have had a few good meals. Is that understood?"

A pregnant pause while Spock's gaze went to Sarek, to see his response to this.

Sarek kept his face impassive.

Spock looked back to his mother, and then back to Sarek. "Yes, Mother," he intoned, looking at his father's face.

"And since you are home and free for the moment, I could use some help in the garden."

"I have schoolwork," Spock said, reacting to this.

"Which you would have gotten done in spite of yet another two hour hike up the mountain. Since you **aren't** hiking up the mountain this evening, you certainly have a half hour to pick some produce in the garden for me." She waved her hand. "Go on, shoo. Remember, you're not too big for me to spank."

Spock gave Sarek a sketchy glance, to see if his father intended to countermand this order, and continue the interview. But at Sarek's neutral look, simply repeated "Yes, Mother" and set off. Sarek could hear a faint sigh as if in relief.

Amanda shook her head at her husband. "Well. I'd ask you what was going on in here. But I don't think I want to know." She looked at him for a moment, as if daring him to tell her. But when Sarek said nothing, she too turned and left.

And Sarek's shoulders dropped in a relaxation of his own tension. Realizing that everything he had wanted to accomplish, with what even **he** regarded as faulty logic, given his past standards and precepts regarding Vulcan traditions, his human wife had accomplished with emotion.

And gotten away with it.

And he had gotten away with it.

Sarek supposed there were some benefits to being an illogical human. And to have married one.

xxx

Amanda was in the kitchen when Spock came in, somewhat grubbier than he had set out, dirt stains on his knees, his hair damp with water droplets from the irrigation system, his shirt soiled with mud and water. And a look of being extremely put upon on his face, unguarded before only his mother. He dumped a basket of produce on the kitchen floor with an air of finality, as if in a chore well done: peppers, cucumbers, peas, carrots, potatoes, beans, two heads of leaf lettuce and a bunch of spinach.

"Well, it looks like we are eating human tonight," Amanda said. "What, was there was nothing at all ripe in the Vulcan part of the gardens?"

"I've been eating Vulcan at school for days," Spock said with a certain disgust, and prodded the basket tentatively with a toe as if just recognizing his choices for what they were. "And all of it, I believe, out of a processor."

Amanda wrinkled her brow. "They do have some non-Vulcan selections in the student cafeteria. I eat there with my students sometimes."

Spock gave her a look. "As if **I** could eat anything but Vulcan foods at the Academy."

She raised her brows. "Many of my Vulcan students eat human foods. **They** like them too," she added pointedly.

"They aren't really human foods. They are Vulcan facsimiles of human foods, manufactured from a Vulcan food processor. Nothing like the real thing and not worth eating. Regardless, I could not make such choices there."

"Do you really think anyone would notice? Or care, if they did notice?

Spock gave her one of his trademark patient looks that indicated he regarded his mother as an idiot. "It is different for me."

She sighed. "Could it be that you are being overly sensitive? The VSA is not one of your old boarding schools. I don't think they'll lynch you for any sign of being human."

"Some of those former classmates are also matriculating at the Science Academy."

"Surely by this time they have mastered some control. Isn't that the point of all those Disciplines your father touts?"

Spock rolled his eyes again at this naiveté. "My attendance there is unique enough."

"But there are many outworlders at the Science Academy," Amanda argued. "I've managed to survive there these many years. And I've never noticed any food police."

"I prefer not to give any reason for notice or criticism. **Someone** is invariably watching."

Amanda wanted to deny it, but she remembered her own early days at the VSA. Vulcans were curious by nature. "Perhaps. But they could be noticing you for laudable reasons. You are very young to be attending there. And you are your father's son. That's heritage enough to entail some scrutiny."

"And my mother's."

She hardly knew what to say to him. She had noticed heads turning when she had seen Spock walking the halls. None of those noticing Spock had seemed critical to her. But she was not the sensitive telepath that her son was, and thus perhaps no judge. But the notice had daunted her enough that she had never chosen to approach Spock at the Science Academy, nor he her, unspoken mutual consent to not feed that curiosity.

And that rankled. Thoughts she had cherished of reconnecting with her overly busy child, meeting sometimes for lunch now that she was teaching at the same school that her son attended, or casually catching him up in the hallways, had fallen victim to this ridiculous, frustrating pose that her son was fully Vulcan and not her child.

"Does that bother you so much?" she asked tartly.

"It is that others are bothered that disrupts my studies. I prefer not to encourage that by any unVulcan behavior."

Amanda sighed. She did expect that eventually, the novelty of her young son's attendance there would pass, and perhaps then they would have that relationship. Or at least some kind of relationship. But for now, none of the replies that drifted through her head - _Is it so very bad? Isn't it the same at any new school? In time, they'll accept you for yourself and not look for the human in you. It's their fault for failing in control, not yours –_ seemed adequate. She too walked a tightrope of notice and occasional condemnation in Vulcan society, and had found it at times unpleasant. But she had been an adult when it started. And she had freely chosen that fate, unlike her son.

And now, far from seeing more of her son now that he was attending the VSA, she was seeing less of him, due to his mountain treks.

"I was remiss to have spoken of it," Spock said, taxed by her long silence. "It is, as you noted, a failure of Vulcan control. You have nothing to do with that."

 _Except for putting you in this position to begin with_ , she thought, but that was a pointless discussion. "Do you want to tell me what your Father was discussing with you?" she asked.

Spock considered. Telling her something now just might prevent her from raising the subject with his Father later. And the fact that she had interrupted them before Sarek raised whatever subject Spock suspected had truly caused his father to bring him into his office, was at least a distraction for them both. Spock was well familiar with the defensive tactic of throwing up two balls to disguise a third.

"I rendered assistance to an elderly Vulcan trekking the Forge. The man sought Sarek out to claim his indebtedness to the clan. That is all."

Amanda turned that over in her mind. From her knowledge of Vulcan customs, that fell into the category of illogical gratitude. She wondered why Sarek would call Spock to task for another Vulcan's illogic. But she didn't want to get into her imperfect understanding of Vulcan behavior now. The meeting seemed innocuous enough.

"Well, it's about time you stayed here for dinner. Lately I've been seeing you more along the walkways of the VSA than at home. And you look as glum there as you do here," she added. "And I don't understand it."

"I do not look glum."

"Well, perhaps only I can tell." She frowned at him. "Why don't you like it? You worked so hard to get there."

"Mother, I neither like nor dislike it," Spock said with wearied patience. "It is merely another Vulcan school."

"I think your father and the board of the VSA would disagree."

"A school is a school," Spock said flatly.

"I thought the Science Academy was a pinnacle of achievement. That you'd be thrilled to make it there. Instead you've been behaving like it's a punishment."

"I have not."

"Clearly you've reached a moody teenager stage," Amanda said, frustrated, "where nothing pleases you and all you want is to go off and brood. I suppose even Vulcans go through it. But Vulcan or human, I don't have to like it."

"Nor do I care for this conversation," Spock said, squaring off against her in resentment of her criticism.

"All right, we'll put it aside for now," She came over to look at his gathered produce critically. "Those **are** nice."

Spock's mouth, set into an uncompromising line at her characterization of his temperament, relaxed at the change of subject. "I thought so. They are quite ripe and are ready for picking. I thought it would be a shame to put them in stasis to eat anything from the native part of the gardens. These taste better fresh."

She shrugged. "I can't really taste the difference with something just out of stasis, but if you say so, I'll concede you have the superior palate. Children usually do. Wash those **and** your hands."

Spock gave her a look but complied. She waited until he was immersed in the chore and couldn't easily escape before asking, "You and your father seemed awfully intense for just an elderly Vulcan offering thanks. What were you arguing about?"

"We were not arguing."

"Let us not mince words. It certainly seemed to be a somewhat charged scene," she ventured. "I was rather glad I broke it up."

"You will have to ask Father."

Amanda sighed, and began to chop vegetables. Spock winced. "Mother, let us switch to more species inherent tasks. I will take the knife. You can waste water."

"I was chopping vegetables before you had ever cut a tooth."

"Frequently cutting yourself, if memory serves. Please consider that my anticipation of your injuring yourself will rob me of any appetite I could have."

"Oh, all right." She switched places with him. Spock sat down at the table. Under cover of the splashing water, she said, "I do wish you would tell me what is going on with you. You seem …so unhappy. Maybe I could help. Whatever it is."

"I've done nothing wrong."

"I never said you had." She hesitated. "Did your father upset you?"

"I refute your emotional characterizations. I am neither unhappy nor upset. And you interrupted him before any specifics immediately after he had spoken to me of Suchon. I know nothing more. But it does not matter."

"What do you mean?"

"Merely that in his view, I seldom do anything right."

"Now, you know that isn't true."

Spock said nothing, his countenance shuttered, aware that in his frustration, he had said too much.

"Look at how advanced you are in your schoolwork."

"That hardly matters."

"Of course it does." She brought the washed vegetables to the table and began to tear lettuce. "Spock. Why are you running off to the mountains every night?"

"Not every night," Spock countered using Vulcan precision as a delaying tactic. He looked to the door as if longing to escape.

"Every other night, lately. Why?"

Spock hesitated a moment, and then said. "It is peaceful."

"Peaceful," she scoffed. "Being bait for lematya."

"The lematya are not a serious consideration. You exaggerate that."

"People – Vulcans – do die from attacks by those beasts."

"I can't conceive how," Spock said. "Even minimal caution is sufficient to avoid them."

"You are avoiding my question."

"It is conducive to meditation."

"How much meditation does a 13 year old need?" she asked. "You go to school and come home to homework. How earth-shattering – or Vulcan if you prefer – can that be that you need to run off to the mountains every chance you get?"

Spock laid his knife down. "I believe this amount is sufficient." He rose to his feet. "And as you say, I do have homework."

Amanda sighed, but let him go.

But when their time for an evening meal arrived, Spock did not. Putting dishes on the table, Amanda fretted. "If he's gone off again…"

"I will check," Sarek said. He couldn't imagine the gate guards would have seen Spock pass without notifying him. But he supposed that with a little effort Spock might have gone over a garden wall and found his way through the forcescreens. He would not put it past him, at any rate.

He went up to the boy's suite. The outer room and workroom were empty. The desk computer again cool. Sarek opened the door to his son's bedroom. But this time the bed was not pristinely made. Spock had tossed the coverlet on the floor in the warm evening, but he was there asleep.

His mother must have changed his bedding. Instead of the golden glow of Vulcan spintassle, the sheets were Rigelian beesilk, the color of a soft rose cloud in a Vulcan dawn. Sarek wrinkled his nose slightly. Amanda had purchased several sets of the sheets for their bedroom, but Sarek had banished them after one trial. Regardless of how light and warm the sanded silk was, soft and yet strong, to him silk had an odor, faint and not necessarily unpleasant, but pervasive enough that he disliked it. Apparently, it didn't bother Spock. The boy had the sheet drawn up to his chin, just under his nose, and his breathing was deep and even.

Amanda too, had never reconciled herself to Vulcan nightwear for children. She bought Spock's from Terran concerns, and except when in boarding school, he wore them. He was wearing some now, a cotton waffle weave imprinted with tiny starships.

Sarek looked at the shadows under his son's eyes, testament to too many sleepless nights on the mountain, the hollows at temple and cheek, indicating too many missed meals. And he forbore to wake him, even for the needed meal. After a moment, mindful of the nighttime chill which would soon be coming on, he picked up the coverlet from the floor, embroidered in glittering threads with the lematya herald of their clan, and put it over the boy. Spock sighed just a little, but did not wake.

Sarek looked at him for a long moment, his son under his clan coverlet, wrapped in Rigelian silk and Terran cotton. The boy looked entirely Vulcan, regardless of his mother's genetics. Very young, still, in spite of his accomplishments. And apart from the outworlder accents, utterly prosaic. Just another Vulcan child, so ordinary Sarek might have indented for him.

Seeing him now, Sarek found Suchon's fable even more incongruous. Surely the old man was mistaken, had fallen prey to Xhanzrei legends himself, and understandable, if regrettable, Surak hero worship, attributing legends to a mere child, no doubt aided by the old man's head injury. Spock had no such fanciful gift. Sarek need not concern himself with any troubling fallout from it, nor burden Spock with those concerns.

He closed the door silently behind him and went down the stairs, calm, relieved and at peace himself. In the kitchen his wife looked up from setting the table. "Don't tell me he's gone."

"He is sleeping in his bed," Sarek said equably. "And I deemed it best not to wake him.

Amanda sat down at the table. "Well, I suppose that's better than what I had feared. If he had disobeyed me-"

"He has not."

"I still don't like him missing another meal."

"If he wakes later this evening, he can eat then."

Amanda sighed. "Somehow I thought, when he reached this stage, things would be easier."

"As did I, my wife," Sarek agreed, but still comforted by his own deep core of certainty and peace that nothing was truly amiss.

"Why did you have him in your office, Sarek?" she asked, unable to put aside her worry. "Spock said he assisted someone up on the mountain?"

Sarek looked at his wife, the frown between her brows, and took her hand in reassurance. "It was a minor incident, my wife. An old man's illogical folly. Nothing to trouble us."

Amanda relaxed in turn, relieved. "I'm glad of that. Now we can just keep Spock home for a while, see he eats and rests, and hopefully we will soon be back to normal."

"Indeed," Sarek agreed, banishing all his concerns of the day, along with Suchon's equally illogical suppositions. Having just seen his son, sleeping like any child in his bed, Sarek was grounded in reality and dismissive of an old man's no doubt embroidered tales. They would put this incident behind them. He was sure of it.

But like Spock, Sarek had never been gifted with precognitive abilities.

 _To be continued…_


	9. Chapter 9

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 9**

Having told his tale to Sarek, and having never been asked or promised to keep it a secret, Suchon was now inclined to keep telling it. It was something, after all, to have been rescued by the heir to Surak, an unexpected, if minor distinction for himself. And a welcome insight for many into the reclusive heir.

Few knew Spock, except for teachers and classmates at his exclusive schools. The majority of Vulcans knew him only from his largely silent role, walking behind Sarek and giving a set affirmation of the commitment to the rule of logic at the yearly Council ceremonies. The opportunity to hear and know something more was of interest to curious Vulcans. Suchon found his story always had a listener. He was even sought out to relate it. That made him speak of it even more.

Eventually, the story made its way to Council. Unlike a tale passed through word of mouth by humans, it had not been over-embroidered with each retelling by Vulcans into something far from the original. But Suchon's codicils on Spock's telepathic awareness of the lematya were always included, and asked about, that being of more interest to Vulcans than the rather prosaic rescue.

Eventually a cadre of Council members to whom the tale found its way considered this sufficiently unusual to ask Sarek's aides for confirmation. Other council members less inclined to accept Sarek's human wife and his half-human heir, aware that T'Pau had never accepted the former into the clan, were inclined to privately doubt, if not the tale, than the alleged ability. They didn't communicate that to Sarek, but they spoke of it to other council members who did.

Sarek's chief aide was tasked with approaching Sarek about this situation. After hearing of Sarek's interview with Suchon himself, he considered briefly before saying, "I believe we must have Spock give evidence of this alleged ability."

"Spock has passed all the ancient tests. It is not the purview of Council," Sarek retorted, "to demand anything more of him."

"But we have Suchon spreading this remarkable tale among populace and Councilors alike. Yet he is unable to give evidence of his own; he relates only Spock's assertions. There are those in Council inclined to believe that assertion, but others in Council doubt –"

"Spock's veracity?" Sarek asked dangerously.

"Suchon has been interviewed. **His** veracity is confirmed. But Spock's has not been."

Sarek said nothing, knowing he could not even claim to have confirmed it himself, having never spoken to Spock about the matter.

"Sarek, naturally I do not impugn Spock's truthfulness. But it could be some misunderstanding on Suchon's part. The only way to silence these doubts of Spock's veracity is to have him attempt to demonstrate these abilities to Council."

"Negative. It is not the business of Council."

"But what is the difficulty if Spock has these abilities?" the aide persisted. "If he does, I believe Council should know – they are legendary abilities attributed in the past to the heirs of Surak. If Spock possesses them, it solidifies his position as heir. You must consider that useful."

"Spock is heir, proven by passage of all the ancient rites. These abilities have never been a requirement of the heir to Surak."

"True. But it would silence those who, due to his mother's heritage, have spoken of Spock not being suitable as heir – you know there are factions that say these things, Sarek, even if not to you. Such an amazing ability, out of legend, could end all such discussions."

"Such discussions are invalid and do not deserve any effort of Spock's to validate or not."

"Sarek. Speak with Spock. Ask him if he is willing to submit to a test of this ability."

Sarek did not answer. Staring at his aide, he deduced that momentum would soon require action, regardless of the legitimacy of the Council to invoke or demand such proof. Vulcan curiosity, once raised, too often demanded satisfaction. He would have to decide whether to deny Council directly or broach such to Spock.

Before the discussion could be carried forward, another aide came to him with a request to move the Alliance meeting with Starfleet regarding the Neutral Zone study group from Council Keep to the Fortress. There was apparently a conflict within the Keep that required the meeting room be freed. Sarek went off to deal with those arrangements.

xxx

At the Science Academy, Spock was encountering his own difficulties from Suchon's tales.

"Well, if it isn't the Heir to Surak," a voice drawled. "Not just scion to a dynasty, but the saver of old men from danger with his superior mountaincraft. And one who allegedly knows where all the lematya live too. How can such a paragon exist in one half breed?"

Spock halted. He had thought himself relatively safe at the Science Academy, where all attending should have mastered the Disciplines. It seemed not. He glanced behind him, noticing there was no other person in this service hallway. He was usually more careful not to be caught alone, but after a period of no altercations, he had become complacent as to his safety. He eyed the Vulcan ahead of him measuringly. A teen like himself, unknown to him personally. The other had three or four years on him and perhaps a third more body weight. But mass could be used against one, and Spock had put more than one lematya down.

"I have no quarrel with you," Spock said, while thinking, with a touch of despair, Why _always? Even here, at the Science Academy. Am I never to be accepted?_

"But I have with you, half breed!"

 _Apparently not_ , Spock thought, given that slur. His mood turning darker, he dropped the netpads he was carrying and flexed his hands as the young Vulcan came for him, prepared to defend himself. He neatly sidestepped out of the way as the Vulcan rushed him, then gave the other a boost, causing him to crash into a cart of recharging maintenance robots waiting to be dispatched on their nightly service. The cart upended, robots spilling everywhere, the metal cart bent with the impact. The other Vulcan tore a bar off the damaged cart, wielding it like a lirpa.

Spock jumped backwards, not soon enough to prevent a slice being ripped through his tunic sleeve, then kicked the bar away – his legs and feet were far stronger than his arms. Against an older stronger opponent with a longer reach, it was the logical move, and sent the other sprawling again. This time his opponent was slower rising to his feet.

Spock was debating what action to take – he suspected his father would prefer he flee rather than finish the altercation definitively, or even just act defensively as he was doing - when a custodian came rushing up, scanning the scene.

"What is occurring here?" the newcomer asked. "Who has upset my valuable -?"

"It's none of your business, cleaner," the young Vulcan said, shaking his head and pulling himself upright. "Leave!" Snatching the bar up again, he turned back to Spock.

"Kroykah!" an older voice said, coming up from behind them.

Spock turned fractionally, unwilling to turn his back on his attacker, to see a man in Council dress, wearing the over-robe of a part time faculty member, coming out of a nearby fresher.

His attacker was unphased, "He attacked me!" he claimed, "That half—"

"You will not repeat that epithet again," the elder Vulcan said. "I heard everything, Sindess. Including Spock's attempt to pacify your violence."

"He-"

"You will report to the dean's office at the 20th hour," the elder Vulcan said. "With your father. Go home now."

For a moment the other stood, holding his weapon still, breathing hard. The custodian, who had been hesitating, unsure if to go or stay, took a threatening step toward him. Sindess dropped the bar, then turned and left.

"Are you undamaged, Spock?" the elder asked, as the custodian picked up his metal bar and righted the cart of robots, muttering. Spock went over to help him.

"Affirmative. I don't know you," Spock looked up at his benefactor, trying to place the many Council and clan markings on his tunic while settling his own disarranged metabolism from fight to something approaching Vulcan calm.

"And yet we have been long acquainted, though you were a near infant when we first met. I am Sofet."

Spock inclined his head, placing the name as a kinsman. "Honored Cousin."

"I believe the honor is mine."

The robots restored, and the custodian dispatched on his way, still muttering over his broken cart, Spock went to pick up his netbooks, his ripped sleeve flapping.

"Perhaps we might have a cup of tea together," Sofet said, as placidly as if the moment's violence had never occurred. "Such an encounter fairly begs for a moment of civilized discourse."

"As you will," Spock said.

Sofet led him down a hallway to an innately carved door.

"But I can't go in there," Spock said, stepping back.

"You will be my guest," Sofet said.

Spock set his mouth and followed him in.

Inside the faculty lounge, Sofet led Spock to a secluded table, where a uniformed page brought them tea and a selection of eatables.

"I generally have a meal at this time," Sofet said. "Honor me by taking refreshment."

Put like that, Spock could hardly refuse, though his stomach was unsettled. He drank rather deeply from the cup of tea – the encounter, besides upsetting his equilibrium and his stomach, had dried his mouth and left him thirsty. When Sofet poured him more without comment, and gestured to the food, he took a small toasted seed cake layered with fruit, since it seemed ill-mannered to decline it altogether. He blinked with surprise at the flavor, unusual in his experience for school food. "This is excellent."

"Why do you think I eat here?" Sofet said wryly, "The food in the faculty refectory is far better than in the student cafeteria."

Spock flicked a brow in amused concession and took a second seed cake, his appetite having suddenly awakened. Across the room, the door opened and another knot of faculty entered. Spock felt the seed cake congeal in his throat as he noticed who was part of the group. A very human woman, who in spite of her companions, some Vulcan, some outworlders, was smiling and even laughing as she conversed. Spock found himself flushing, inadvertently self conscious, and eyeing the other groups in the room to evaluate how this was regarded by her colleagues. He was surprised to discover that no one in the refectory gave the group any undue notice.

"Do you wish to join your mother?" Sofet asked.

"N-No."

Sofet flicked a brow. "I myself am not personally acquainted with her."

Spock said nothing, hoping this was not a tacit hint for him to introduce her. Somehow, he suspected that fresh from a fight, his tunic torn and disarranged, was not the time she would wish for him to approach her at the Academy, nor to introduce a Vulcan relative to her.

"But alas, I must shortly appear at Council for an important vote." Sofet peered at him. "Are you aware of the nature of this vote?"

"Negative." Spock eyed him, and took another cautious bite of cake. Since Sofet appeared to be waiting for an answer, he asked, "Should I be?"

Sofet flicked a brow, in mild surprise, but didn't divulge further. "I regret the hostility which that individual expressed. Have you encountered any other such experiences here?"

"Negative," Spock said. He would have somehow gotten around confessing that even if he had.

"He will be dealt with appropriately."

Spock shifted uncomfortably. "I am willing to let the incident pass without further repercussions or notice."

"But I am not. The Science Academy is for the intellectual elite. Those here are expected to have mastered the Disciplines. To be focused on dispassionate study. Not brawling like pre Kahs Wan infants."

Spock glanced inadvertently at his mother, but Sofet was frowning at his steepled hands, continuing with, "This is no place for such behavior, or for such undisciplined attitudes."

"Yes, sir.'

"Cousin," Sofet corrected, looking up from his hands with mild reproof.

Spock looked at him, unwillingly touched by the address. He had very little experience of kinsman claiming such relationships with him. "Yes, cousin." He ate a few more bites of cake.

Sofet frowned slightly. "Spock… what Suchon has stated, about the lematya...?"

Spock colored faintly at the mention.

"Is it - with you - as he claims?"

Spock looked at him for a long moment, as if doubting Sofet's good intentions. "Yes," Spock admitted. "But, truly, I had no idea it was a point of conflict to have such an ability."

"Certainly it is not. Merely unusual. Except, perhaps, for the direct descendents of Surak."

"I had not known it was even that, until recently," Spock said.

Sofet studied him. "You do not regret that heritage, do you?"

Spock flicked a brow. "Rather that it seems some regret it in me."

Sofet half smiled. "I see. It is being burdened with the gifts of Surak that you find regrettable."

Spock said nothing, then ventured, "More that others find them so."

"The thinking of such others is their own problem."

"Some at least, have made it mine," Spock said darkly. Then he let out a little sigh. "I truly did not know that it was **wrong**. In any way."

"It is not wrong. But such an ability has not been attested for -"

"Surely you can see that makes it wrong, in some other's minds, for me."

Sofet tilted his head, considering, "Do you consider the judgment of ignorant children to rule you? Or is It that of others? Perhaps of Sarek?"

Spock said nothing. He would not have spoken of his relationship with Sarek to this stranger, regardless of his kinsman status. He never even spoke of it to T'Pau, and only rarely to his mother.

"Perhaps both," Sofet said, taking that from the lack of denial to either as evidence. "I suspect, for Sarek, it was merely unexpected. But though your father does not possess such an ability, it is not outside the realm of your familial traits."

Spock looked at the man who spoke so easily of his father, without the usual obeisance that most Vulcans affected. "Perhaps it is acceptable, within my father's heritage."

"But you think not within your own?" Sofet half smiled again. "Sarek does not have this gift."

"Therefore **I** should not," Spock reiterated.

"Do you think you compete with Sarek?"

Spock started back at that unlikely comparison, then regained control. "How could I, when I had no idea this was out of the ordinary?"

"And you don't wish to be out of the ordinary?"

Spock said nothing.

"I am afraid you cannot escape that, from either side of your heritage. Spock, those Vulcans who are not of your line, can find the gifts of Surak …somewhat over encompassing. That would be true regardless of your mother's heritage."

"But those in my father's line, find them even more so **because** of my mother."

'Perhaps. Only because they perhaps did not expect them, and are thus unprepared to deal with them."

"I don't wish to be **dealt** with," Spock said shortly. "I see no need to have it mentioned again, as I will not."

"It may not be that easy," Sofet said.

Spock bent his head.

Sofet sighed. "Unfortunately, I have that vote in Council to which I must attend."

Spock slid to his feet, "I am honored by your consideration…Cousin."

"I trust we will meet again," Sofet said as they parted, Spock doing his best to minimize his flapping sleeve from any onlookers.

Spock looked after the elder Vulcan broodingly as Sofet disappeared into the knots of walkers, half regretting the meeting. Based on experience he doubted it could result in anything good. Then he squared his shoulders and went on to face his day.

Coming home after his classes, Spock noticed a swarm of flyers on the hard packed sands before the Fortress' main gate, and another swooping towards it, coming from the Sirakvui Spaceport, rather than from Shikahr. Spock courteously cut back, to give the guest precedence. But at the back of his mind was one of his father's adjurations. It had been one of the few instructions Sarek had given him that hadn't been straight out of standard flight regulations, or the parameters for his type of flyer. He also remembered the dark look in his father's eyes, the way menace had sharpened the lines and planes of his face, even seemingly without him changing expression.

"If you ever find yourself bracketed by unknown craft, Spock, herded or driven to a location - even if you are unsure of the motivation - you are to avoid that by any and all means. Even, or perhaps especially toward the Fortress. You are to cut out, above the forcescreens here, and take evasive action." And Sarek had shown him the sequence of keys that would bypass the fight and speed restrictions on his little flyer, and give it a facile boost of power.

Of course, in his modifications, Spock had removed most of the 'nanny' restrictions on his little craft, while leaving them ostensibly in place to any overt review. Freeing him from requiring such a bypass sequence. Only someone who did more than casual servicing of the craft would notice his omissions and bypasses. And Spock intended to do all his own maintenance and service.

But that didn't mean he disregarded his father's words. Innate courtesy, born and further trained in him, would have automatically made him give precedence to a stranger. But now, without conscious thought, he cut back his engines to let the other vehicle pass him and then with a burst of power flew high, clearing the top of the Fortresses forcescreens rather than going through them to land. Circling the Fortress to reconnoiter, he scrutinized the activity below.

Many flyers had landed before the gates, and he could see the Fortress guard had increased accordingly. They were ringed around the parapets and guard posts, and several dozen appeared to be on the ground by the gate. Spock set his sensors to scan the crowd, curious at the need for extra security. With the increased magnification, he saw the familiar emblazons of the Andorian and Tellur ambassadors, and other Alliance members. It must be some sort of meeting, or conference, Spock concluded, with security being increased to protect such valuable targets accordingly. With that confirmed, Spock swooped back down and cleared the forcescreens, landing just after the flyer he had given way to. He saw it was familiar, carrying the Federation and Starfleet emblazons. So not strictly an Alliance meeting, Spock concluded.

In spite of having landed well after the Federation vehicle, he alighted first, and was walking past when the occupant stumbled coming out the hatch, nearly falling face first onto the sands. Spock leapt forward to offer assistance, even before the personage's accompanying guards could move. He cushioned the man's fall, going down on his arms to the ground.

"You will forgive my breaching of courtesy," Spock said, letting go of the man when as he recovered his balance and began to rise with a grunt, "but disorientation is not uncommon for those newly arrived to Vulcan. Time is required to accustom oneself to the change in gravity and oxygen levels."

Longworth squinted at Spock, even as he straightened, his aides running up to help. "Oh, I've torn your tunic. I apologize."

"No, I –"

"I've seen you before!" Longworth said.

"Affirmative, sir," Spock said. He nodded to the approaching gate guards, indicating he had this visitor in hand. "You are here for a meeting?"

"In the Armory."

"I can show you the way, sir." The Admiral's aides also dropped back, giving them privacy.

"That was you on that ship. On patrol in the Neutral Zone Patrol sector, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Young, aren't you, to be in Vulcan's Space Force?"

"I was serving an internship, sir."

"Hmmm. And I've seen you here, twice before."

"This is my home."

The human looked from the Fortress to Spock as if doubting anyone lived in such an edifice.

"Ambassador Sarek is my father," he continued. "My name is Spock."

"M' name's Longworth. Admiral." The Admiral tugged at his collar, his face shading into an unhealthy red.

"Perhaps you would like to rest here, a moment," Spock said, pausing by a huge lematya statue in the courtyard. He indicated a nearby bench. "You seem unwell."

"Just off ship," Longworth mumbled. "Bit of a headache."

"Indeed," Spock said uneasily. "The pressure and oxygen levels here, in the foothills, generally require acclimation or at least, medication for humans. Failure to do so can result in-" He was cut off by Longworth pitching forward again. Spock barely caught him and eased him to the ground.

"Admiral! Admiral!" His aides rushing up from where they had dropped back, giving privacy to the Admiral's conversation, now shook him to no avail. One pulled out a communicator, then looked at a loss when he had no answer. "Our ship is in spacedock, out of communicator range. He needs a doctor-"

"A resident human physician is known to me," Spock said, and put out his hand for the communicator. "If you will permit me."

In short order, Dr. Mark Abrams' flyer was landing on the sands. After a hefty dose of triox, and some other drugs to manage altitude sickness, the Admiral recovered his color and equilibrium.

"Thank you for your prompt attention, Doctor," Longworth said, breathing easier.

"Well, I fairly jumped to get a summons from this character," Abrams said, gaze settling on Spock. "Never thought I'd see the day."

Spock eyed him warily in turn. They had a long history with each other, not all of it estimable.

"I'm well enough to join the meeting," Longworth said.

"Yes," Abrams turned his attention back to his patient. "Next time your ship's physician premedicates you, remind him that this location is a few thousand meters higher than Shikahr proper, with atmospheric pressure and oxygen levels reflecting that. It is cooler here than in Shikahr, I'll grant you, and more comfortable for humans in that regard. Maybe that's why they moved your meeting here. But if you're coming just off ship, best to premedicate for the Llangon Mountains, not the Shikahr plains. And you'd do better to acclimate properly, with a stint at a lower altitude on planet, rather than relying solely on drugs and coming directly to the mountains."

"I'm afraid in Fleet we don't always have that luxury, Doctor. But I'll remind him," Longworth said.

"Or you could wear an environmental suit." At Longworth's lip curl, he shrugged. "I know, and these young ones," he regarded Longworth's aides, "can adjust more readily but as we get older-" He broke off at Longworth's renewed scowl. "Well, a pleasure to meet you, Admiral." Abrams turned to Spock. "Tell your mother I said hello," Abrams said, and scrutinized the boy. "And tell her I said to feed you. You get any leaner and I could have her up on charges of abuse for starving a child."

Spock's mouth set and his eyes narrowed. "I will consider your message, sir."

"Behave yourself," Abrams said, and nodded to the Admiral. "Sir." He took his leave.

"The Armory is this way, sir," Spock said. "If you are well enough to walk. If not, I could summon the guards for a litter. We have one in the archives, I believe. T'Pau once -"

"Good Lord, no. I'm feeling better. I had thought the meeting was at Council Keep, in Shikahr. It was only after I was in the flyer that I remembered it had been moved up here. Some sort of last minute vote in Council Keep, bumping any 'outworlders' out of the place. They say Vulcans are supposedly so-" He eyed Spock and cut off whatever he was about to say, "My own fault.

Spock said nothing to that. He knew from experience with his mother, that humans had a spotty memory.

"I owe you thanks as well," Longworth added.

"I rendered such assistance as was logical."

"Hmm. Nevertheless you were something of a lifesaver. Quick thinking." Longworth gave Spock a shifty gaze. "Didn't you like serving in Vulcan's Fleet?"

"I found it interesting," Spock said. "But as I was scheduled to matriculate at the Science Academy, my stay on patrol was short. Though I do expect to return, periodically."

"You speak Standard very well."

Spock's lips curved briefly before he controlled himself. "It is a primary language for me. My mother is human."

"I knew that," Longworth said, nodding. "Half forgot it though. Got enough on my mind."

Spock forbore again to comment on his long familiarity with faulty human memory, slowing as they reached their destination.

"Speaking of schools, we have a fine school in Starfleet Academy," Longworth said, eyeing Spock speculatively as they came up to the Armory.

"I have never heard of it," Spock said as politely as he could. He stopped before the huge doors to the Armory, where the clamor of many voices rang from inside. "Your meeting is within."

"You are a might young for the Academy, but hey, boys grow. I'm giving these out to any likely young Vulcans I see. Haven't seen all that many, and none so qualified as you." He pressed a data chip into Spock's hand. "Take a gander to that, when you have a chance. And I'll see about replacing your shirt." He disappeared through the double doors, followed by his entourage.

Spock unfolded his hand, to regard the data chip, wondering why he should bring a male goose to it, and if he should have informed Longworth that in spite of the many Terran foodstuffs grown in the Fortress gardens, they raised no domestic fowl. The shirt remark he regretted, having not had opportunity to correct the Admiral's misconception as to the damage. But it seemed innocuous enough.

But reviewing the data chip in the accustomed way in a viewer in his room, he discovered it was a précis of the offerings of the Federation's Starfleet Academy. And while he saw no male geese there, he did read that they took applicants from all Federation members.

And later that afternoon, before the meeting in the Armory had ended, a guardsman delivered a package to his room, relayed by one of the Admiral's aides. Opening it, he discovered it was a t-shirt, of soft cotton, emblazoned with the logo of Starfleet Academy: a bridge, with stylized rays of the sun, and an odd triangular like symbol above. He raised a brow at it, and then shoved it in the back of his wardrobe. It was a too large for him now. But he supposed that someday, it might be made useful as nightwear.

He knew better than to consider leaving it out, or wearing it anywhere his father might see it. Given Sarek's views on Starfleet, it would only distress him.

But after his recent unpleasant experience at the Science Academy, the idea of Starfleet gave him something to consider

 _To be continued…_

 _review, review, review..._


	10. Chapter 10

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 10**

Returning to Council after his meeting with Longworth, Sarek discovered that in his absence a majority of Council had voted to demand a test of Spock's telepathic abilities as to detecting lematya. They had not committed to demanding that Spock actually **pass** such a test to all of Council's varied and different levels of satisfaction, whatever those might be. That would be next to impossible to argue to a conclusion. But a majority had determined they wanted to see this alleged ability demonstrated to a chosen representative group.

All of Council could not, in practicality, be present at such a demonstration. In the narrow peaks of the Llangons, vehicles were largely prohibited from landing. In addition, the presence of the entire Vulcan Council, their many minds and presences would inhibit both test and the predators alike. They agreed to have a subset of representatives monitor the test and report back to Council.

Having not been informed of the vote before it had taken place - it purposely occurring during his Alliance meeting with Longworth to prevent his shutting it down - and his control already taxed by that, Sarek's internal reaction to this news was incendiary, however his outward control appeared. But a short conference with his aides proved there was little he could do. He had been remiss, distracted by the Starfleet meeting, not to have dealt definitively with this issue before it had come to this. Nevertheless, his aides felt his displeasure.

But now, Sarek reflected that Spock had been sealed to Council as his heir by his own hand. Spock belonged as much to Council, in such things, as to himself. Such an heirship was not a solely hereditary or inevitable position. It was considered as much meritocracy as hereditary in nature. Sarek could present an heir. But the Council needed to confirm his acceptance. That was by no means one sided.

Council had the right to demand tests of their future leader, to prove his legitimacy and capability. The ancient test of Kahs Wan was one still demanded largely only of the future heads of clans. And in Surak's line, the requirement was further imposed that it had to be passed on the first trial.1 And there were other tests: academic, psionic, control that were imposed solely on the heir to Surak.

Spock had navigated past all those milestones successfully, to Sarek's intense relief, and, in some deep part of himself, near astonishment. With Spock's graduation to the Science Academy, Sarek had thought them through this dangerous phase of Spock's acceptance into his role in Vulcan society, for there were no other traditional tests, save that of marriage and producing an heir.

But Council had a right to set further tests. Sarek could argue Spock's being deposed from his position as heir should he be found to fail a test that had never been required of any past heir to Surak. This one in particular Sarek himself could not pass. Still, Sarek was powerless to prevent Council from requiring such tests as they would. However unprecedented the test, he knew their right to set it was inviolate.

However remiss he believed himself at letting such a vote be held, it was, unfortunately the one type of vote in which his absence was not only allowed but prescribed. There was nothing he could do now but prepare Spock as best he could, and set the time and place. That much, as parent, he believed he had a right to control. So he intended to inform Council, when they convened the next day.

xxx

Amanda had learned to read her Vulcan husband very well. She knew him abstracted and remote with some problem. She knew him relaxed and engaged, even playful, with her. And when times were good, even to be so with Spock. And she knew him when he had been taxed near past his Vulcan controls. When that state had been reached, she did her best to stay out of his way until he had meditated his way back to Vulcan calm. Except when it involved Spock. Then she had sometimes to act as her son's last line of defense. But such defense in her was minor compared to the fury of a scorned Vulcan father.

"You're rather late-" she stopped seeing the set mouth and flashing eyes of her oh-so-Vulcan husband. "What's wrong?"

"Is Spock home yet?"

"Yes," Amanda hesitated, eyeing her husband's stern visage. "Should I warn him to change his name and put himself up for adoption?"

"I am not amused, my wife."

"I can tell. You haven't had humor for much of anything lately. It's made you very tiresome," she tried a smile.

Sarek didn't respond to this opening by any relaxation of manner.

Amanda sighed. "No Vulcan, not even a son of Surak, should have to face so many aggravations. Look, why don't you sit down, have a cup of tea," _and calm down,_ she thought, "And fill me in. What's taxed your temper? It can't be Spock. Is it Council? The Alliance? The Federation? Starfleet?"

Sarek did a virtual double take, staring at her, realizing she didn't know about any of this, beyond Spock's initial saving of Suchon and his spread of that tale, limited only to the rescue, not the latest controversy about Spock's telepathic claims.

And Sarek had in fact never quite explained to her the nature of Spock's relationship with Council. She had taken Spock's acceptance by them as a given since he'd been sealed at three. He didn't think she quite understood the conditional nature of it, apart from Spock's necessary mastery of the Disciplines, something she knew was required of every adult Vulcan. And his passing the Kahs Wan. That survival test had stressed the bonds of his marriage quite enough. She'd been furious that Vulcan custom had demanded any risk to the life of the child she'd risked her life to bear. While their arguments had never quite come to that, Sarek had been aware she'd come close to threatening to take Spock and leave. Her human acceptance of obligatory Vulcan customs had been taxed so much that he preferred to spare her those of which she didn't need to directly concern herself. Even, perhaps especially, where they involved her son.

"Sarek?" she asked, alarmed.

"Where is Spock?"

"I suppose he's studying." She regarded him worriedly. "Sarek, what can it be? I saw Spock today at the Academy, just this afternoon. He's been in class since you last saw him this morning. So he couldn't have done anything wrong. He was fine when I saw him at the Academy. He was even eating, so he couldn't have been -"

"You had lunch with him?" Sarek asked, frowning, imagining how Spock's image might be affected by close association with his human mother in a place where Sarek hoped his Vulcan image would be solidified.

"Not lunch. And not with me," she said, her eyes flashing. "Do you really believe-?" she scaled down her own anger at Sarek's implication. Now when he was upset was no time to make things worse. "He was in the faculty lounge this afternoon." At Sarek's raised brow, she added with some heat, "With **another** faculty member – a relative of yours, if I remember him right. Sofet, I think his name was." She turned to prepare pot and leaves for tea and calm her own temper. Before she threw a dishtowel at him.

"He is not on the physics faculty. Why was Spock meeting with him?" Sarek asked suspiciously.

Concentrating on her preparations, Amanda bit her lip, wondering if her husband knew how much control humans sometimes had to practice, around Vulcans. "I didn't ask. I didn't talk to them. I had thought that I might go over, once I noticed them, just to say hello. But then they finished and left before I could." She poured him a cup of tea. "I heard Sofet mention he had to get to some vote at Council as they were walking out the door."

Sarek's eyes flashed. That vote had been the one on Spock. He wondered what Sofet had spoken to his son about and to what motive. He had not thought of Sofet as being involved in any way with Spock personally. If he had known of it, he would have not considered him ill disposed to him. But ill disposed or not, Sofet had neither reason nor right to bring this subject up with his son. His temper flared anew.

Amanda brought the tea and cups to the table. "Sarek, Vulcan control aside, you are looking positively feral. You are scaring me. And I thought Sofet was a friend of yours?"

"He has no business with Spock at all."

Amanda put the teapot down on the table with a thump. "Sarek, I wish you wouldn't be so controlling over whom Spock sees and why. I thought with him going to the Academy he was past all that now."

"How can you believe that, when this issue with Suchon has created such a controversy?"

"What do you mean?" Amanda asked, puzzled. "Spock saved Suchon. That can't be all that much of a controversy."

Sarek rose abruptly, doubly unwilling to explain Spock's perhaps questionable claims to his mother. "When Spock comes down from his studies, tell him I wish to see him." Sarek went out the garden court door to his office across the way.

"What's he done wrong now?" Amanda called after him to her husband's departing back. But he didn't turn. And she suddenly didn't want to know any more.

"Just great," she muttered. She sank down, and in lieu of Sarek, drank the tea herself. "It never rains on Vulcan. But it pours."

Neither of them were aware that their son, paused on the stairs outside the kitchen, had heard Sarek's parting words. After a moment, he disappeared upstairs.

She started dinner then went to the media center, reluctant to be used as Sarek's dark messenger. If Sarek wanted him, he could go upstairs and seek him out himself.

It was by mere chance that she came across Spock when she returned to check on dinner. He was dressed in a desert sandsuit and boots, and dropping a couple of cereal bars into a light knapsack.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"As you see. I am going out."

"I grounded you."

"I have stayed home the length of time you demanded."

"You haven't exactly gained much weight either."

Staring at her, Spock pointedly took a third cereal bar and dropped it into his knapsack.

Amanda set her mouth at that. "Well, you can't go yet. Your father wants to see you," she told him.

Spock's brows dropped into thunderclouds in a near imitation of his father's feral look. "I have not done anything to merit discipline. Or a lecture. Or continued behavioral restrictions."

"Don't shoot the messenger. I don't know anything about it," Amanda said, and then sighed. "Spock, I do wish you'd stay for dinner. It will be ready soon. If you insist on going on a hike, can't you delay it for an hour?"

Stepping around her, Spock snatched an orange from the bowl on the table as he passed by her. "I wish to meditate on the Forge."

"You are the worst child ever born," Amanda told him, taxed by both her Vulcans, taking out her flaring temper on her son. "I suppose given this is one of your precious traditions, I can't continue to stop you. But if you are skipping dinner, you had better be back for breakfast before going off to school. As your mother I have the right to demand you eat at least **one** balanced meal a day with some protein. I have **some** say over your upbringing," she claimed, following him in frustration as he headed for the same garden court door his father had walked out of. "At least until you are full grown."

Hastening out the door to escape her, Spock gave her a look that told her what he thought of that.

"You can't fight lematya bare handed on just fruit and cereal bars," she called after him. "And remember your father wants to see you before you go."

But when she looked out the garden side windows as she belatedly checked on the evening meal, she saw him walking out the main gate rather than crossing the garden court to Sarek's office wing. She realized, shocked, that rather than going to see his father, Spock had ignored her message and his father's summons and simply left. Leaving her to face Sarek alone.

"Oh, you **brat** ," she said, with feeling.

xxx

She was uneasy about Spock not appearing at dinner, but when Sarek raised a brow at that empty place, she let him know she had seen Spock walking out the gate up to the Forge. Sarek let it go, assuming Spock had never seen his mother.

Sarek was equable about the omission and had not chosen to seek out his son right away for, as always, a logical reason. Upon meditation and reflection, Sarek considered the benefits of an interval would allow him time to regain control and perspective. Perhaps it left him somewhat delinquent as a parent in not choosing to inform Spock of the Council vote immediately. But a delay of a day could hardly be of any great import. He knew he could have intercepted Spock had he made certain of his receiving his message. A note to the guards at the Fortress gates would have sufficed.

But the gate guards had not been notified, and let him pass, as always. And Sarek was content, while he considered how to present this situation to his son.

Some hours after Spock had left, the guards also noted others climbing into the foothills, taking the trail that millennia ago Surak's clan blazed in defense of their lands. Every Shikahr dweller who intended to hike into the mountains, and not just travel the desert Forge or ramble in the lower foothills took that ancient trail head. After Suchon's accident, the guards had been tasked to more closely monitor the comings and goings of those who did. They recorded a group of Vulcan males in their late teens hiking past the Fortress up the trail, noted their somewhat grim aspect, somewhat at odds for most Vulcans, who hiked for the beauty and meditation afforded by the exercise. But theirs was not to wonder why. They recorded their number and their visages as they passed, and then dismissed them from their minds.

One other passed by the ancient check point the guards monitored, an elder Vulcan, eminent and known to them, one of the clan. They acknowledged his passage with a tacit salute. Sofet paused to ask a question, received an answer, and then moved on. The question also gave them some pause. But speculation, however tempting, and any acting upon it was outside the realm of their duties. They turned their gazes to note Sofet's passage up the side of the mountain, but when he disappeared, soon put him from their mind as well.

Of all those concerned with him tonight, Spock thought little of any of them, or considered that he was in their thoughts either. Of Sarek, he thought the most, an uneasy niggle at the back of his mind that payment would be due for ignoring his father's order. But he didn't regret his disobedience. He'd suffered staying home a requisite number of days. After today's disquieting attack, he'd been longing to escape to the hills and meditate. He had certainly not been in the mood to be chastised or lectured about that incident at the Academy. If Sarek chose to blame him for it, and Spock supposed that word had gotten around to him, such things usually did make their way to his notice, Spock was not in a mood to quietly take it. Not without a period of mediation to prepare himself to sit through that injustice calmly.

To his mind, at least before he'd ignored his father's summons and walked out the door, he had done nothing to merit discipline. Now, if he was to receive discipline tomorrow, he would have justified the need for it by his disobedience. So he could accept it with an appropriately contrite frame of mind. If Sarek wanted to punish him then he would do something to merit that punishment. That seemed a fair enough trade to his adolescent mind. At his present stage of development, dependent upon his parents, subject to their discipline, he had little enough recourse otherwise.

He didn't fret about the discipline Sarek might mete out. He did worry, a little, about his Mother's reaction to his disobedience. He found her unpredictable. Telepathic discipline was unpleasant. But he had learned to handle it. His mother's wrath, however, was an entirely different thing and could manifest itself in many ways. But there was no help for that and no predicting her. She could entirely ignore his disobedience, as like to kiss him as to spank him. It had been some years since she had done the latter, but she often threatened it. He never really knew what to expect from her. When he was attempting or needed to be at his most Vulcan, that unpredictability in itself was most trying to him, and made him turn from her.

But in contrast to his very different parents, the mountains were clean of ambiguity, and constant. Survival was all that mattered, a survival he had been trained for, and found eminently possible with reasonable care. It contained no human/Vulcan conflict, no concern about pleasing and obeying two very disparate parents. When he was very much a child, he had been confused and at times despairing of the dilemma that meeting their contradictory requirements and needs had presented him. That, in part, had driven him to solace in the hills. Now he knew the task presented to him at his birth had been impossible. He no longer entirely castigated himself for failing it. He just preferred to stay out of their way. The mountains answered both needs.

That others came to his sanctuary bothered him not at all. He thought of them as he did the tourists that besieged his Fortress home, as a transient and easily avoided nuisance. The mountain pass had been free to all since Surak had brought the clans to peace. His clan monitored those who came through with lofty but distant regard, and only became involved if they got into trouble.

Having reached his retreat on the mountains, studying contentedly, he was aware of a rowdy groups' approach not at first by noise, but by a disturbance in the ambient, as much empathic as telepathic, as every creature on the Forge rose up and wondered at their odd behavior. Spock looked up from his computer pad, set aside his cup of tea, and came out of his sanctuary cave. He looked curiously out over the ridge to see what had roused the entire peak to alert status.

Virtually all travelers through the peaks placed a value on silence and stealthy travel, not only because one could hardly appreciate the natural elements by masking them with noise, but also because noise attracted predators. Most predators gave Vulcans a wide berth, unless they were very hungry, or they perceived the Vulcan was at a disadvantage, young, old, ill or injured. A noisy prey, one who didn't practice desert caution was presumably compromised. Thus noise attracted predators. But when Spock peered down the ridge at the noisemakers, he saw that there was Sindess, the young Vulcan who had attempted an altercation with him earlier. With him was also Stonn. Spock thought little of Stonn. Though of a high born family, he was …well, slow was the kindest way to put it. And too ready to fall in with any scheme put to him. The other Vulcan Spock did not know.

Spock could hear them clearly. They appeared to be arguing.

"How much higher—"

"I'm not attempting the pass-"

"It can't be that much further. Not more than a few hours hike from the Fortress. He won't be as high as the pass on the peak. Because he has to get there and back every evening and morning. That has to limit the places he can be."

Above, Spock's brows rose in wild surmise.

"I am not well trained in desert craft," Stonn said. "Are you sure you are tracking him?"

"I brought the sensor."

"It's been useless detecting him so far, between the shielding properties of these rocks, and all the echoes," the third Vulcan said.

"Once we get higher up, out of these foothills, it will work," Sindess said.

"The higher we go, the more danger from the lematya," Stonn said.

"But don't you know, Spock says he can pinpoint the lematya, even without sensors. So where **he** is, they **won't** be."

"So you say. I knew him as a child. I never heard him claim that," Stonn said.

"Suchon said-"

"You're basing all this on some elderly, no doubt senile, ascetic whose tale has gone to his head," the third Vulcan said.

Spock frowned and faded back among the rocks. _What folly_ , he thought. _Three individuals not familiar with the lay of the ground, trying to hunt one individual who_ _ **is**_ _. And they are not even being quiet about it._ But then a foreboding came over him. _But why are they hunting me? Not for any good reason._ His jaw set. In that moment he could not have been mistaken as a son of Sarek. He drew back but as he did, he heard one of the party below exclaim, looking at his device, "There he is. Beneath us!"

Spock frowned and leaned down, wondering if their device was truly as faulty as their logic. But then he saw a faint figure below.

"We'll wait for him, hidden, here and here," Sindess said. "And then we'll ambush him. Teach that so-called Son of Surak a lesson."

"I thought we were just going to get him to prove he can find the lematya without a sensor device," the third said. "And our sensor was to prove it. You told me-"

"We'll do that too. After. If he's up to it. Come on, get in position!"

Spock looked down the mountain at the foreshortened hiker, walking innocent and unsuspecting into ambush. Spock calculated, based on his speed, he had perhaps fifteen minutes to head him off. He faded back from the overhang and headed down an intersecting back trail.

It was unfortunate that this trail intersected the den of a lematya pair. But as Spock came down near their den, he sensed they were moving up higher on the mountain, no doubt to hunt. He held his breath, barriered his shields to make himself as psionically invisible as possible, and moved as quietly as he could through that section of trail. Then, free of those obstacles, he poured on the speed, slipping and sliding a bit, coming down hard on the rocks once in an effort to meet the hiker before he missed him at the intersection of the two trails. Rounding the corner of the side trail to intercept him, he came face to face with the potential victim and nearly gasped. "Sofet!"

"Spock." Sofet raised a brow in mild surprise at Spock's manner, somewhat out of character for a meditative hike, but he nodded agreeably. "I too felt the need for mediation tonight. No doubt for the same reason. Perhaps we might-"

"You mustn't go further."

Sofet turned. "Why not?"

"There is a group of three Vulcans -one of them is Sindess – on the trail above. They intend violence. You are walking into an ambush."

"Violence?" Sofet raised a brow. "But the issue is settled. He has been removed from the Academy."

"It is not intended against you. They have mistaken your presence for my own. I was above them on the trail. I heard their plans when they mistook you for me. They are waiting above. You must leave-"

Sofet was silent for a moment, staring intently up at the peak and then nodded. "Yes. I am not an exceptional telepath. But there is no mistaking that ambient is for violence. Well, we will leave them to wait in vain. Let us go down."

Spock stepped back. "But I have no need to return. I know the terrain well. I can easily avoid them. I merely wished to warn you before you encountered them."

Sofet raised his brows. "Spock, I have no doubt you could avoid them. But is it wise to take any risk? You are one and they are three." Seeing the young Vulcan unconvinced, Sofet fixed him with an unblinking stare. "You are the only heir to Surak. How could I face Sarek, if harm came to you? You must spare me that. And consider the legitimate concern I have for your welfare. Returning now with me is logical on a number of levels."

Spock still held back, thinking of the cave he had so abruptly left on the mountain, thinking of his homework, the compad still open to an unfinished equation, thinking of Sarek at home, and his own disregard of his father's order. "My schoolwork is above—"

"I will speak to your tutor and see that you are not penalized if you are behind this once in your work."

"I don't wish to go home," Spock said unthinking. And then was appalled at his candor.

Sofet raised a brow. "Indeed."

Spock hung his head. "I should not have spoken to you of it."

"You should speak to someone. You are yet a child, and in need of guidance. But Spock, you must make peace with your father. His regard of you is not as you believe."

Spock's mouth set, clearly disbelieving this. But his shoulders dropped in capitulation. "Very well. If I must." They turned to go down, and proceeded in silence for a time, their progress measured. Spock was pacing himself for the elder and not eager to face Sarek. Then there was a sudden roar of a lematya, followed by a chorus of screams from above.

"They are being attacked!" Spock said.

"Lematya," said Sofet, staring gravely in the direction of the cries.

"I knew there was a pride of them heading up the mountain to hunt," Spock fretted. "But I had thought them hunting their regular prey. I had not considered that this group-" he turned in the direction of the screams.

"If they consider them without normal caution or defenses," Sofet began.

"Yes. Of course. We should go back at once," Spock said.

"Hold, Spock. We cannot reach them in time."

"We must try," Spock said. "I have anti-venom, in a cave just above-"

"I have a better solution," Sofet said, and pulled out a device. Spock wondered if the elder Vulcan had actually carried a weapon into a wildlife preserve, and what good it could possibly do so far away, but then he breathed out in relief. It was only a communications device.

Sofet called the Guard, describing the situation in a few succinct sentences, giving coordinates, and suggesting the guardsmen be accompanied by a medical team with lematya anti-venom.

They then hurried up the mountain, determined to render what aide they could. But they could see the guard passing overhead in special mountain engineered aircars, designed for the tight passes. A healer emblazoned vehicle appeared overhead not long afterward. The lematya fled before these reinforcements with no need for them to be fought or stunned.

"By the time we arrive," Sofet said, as they hastened upwards, "our efforts in this climb will be for naught."

"It was, in part, my fault," Spock confessed to Sofet, fully expecting that to be ultimately Sarek's judgment, anticipating Sarek's logic in advance and knowing where he was likely to place blame. "I knew the lematya were heading up trail. But I **thought** they were hunting real game." He sounded a little defensive, even to himself. At Sofet's raised brow, he struggled to regain control. "I should have warned them-"

"That these delinquents were the game," Sofet said, with grim humor. "They would have attacked you."

"Perhaps. But if they should die, for a childish aggression-"

"They will receive prompt attention.

Spock said nothing.

"How is it the lematya did not take you out first? You were closer, smaller, alone, and fleeing. Altogether a much more tempting prey."

Spock raised his brows. "I know better than to be caught by lematya," Spock said, marginally offended. "This group appears unfamiliar with desert craft." He considered that doubtfully in comparison with his own familiarity. "Or at least not facile at it. As for me, these are our lands. I know them well. And this group was making a great deal of noise at first. That may be what set the lematya on the move, thinking them compromised."

Sofet gave him a sharp glance. "You knew where the creatures were?"

"Of course, I know where they **den** ," Spock said, avoiding the implication, tiring of answering for Suchon's assertions. "As much time as I spend on the passes, I have mapped the dens and hunting territories."

"That wasn't my question."

Spock gave him a look that refused to answer to what was already known. Sofet tipped a satisfied brow.

"I was not thinking about lematya then," Spock pondered as they moved up the trail as fast as caution warranted. "I was concerned about foiling the ambush plan. I did not know it was **you**. But regardless of the target, no one else should have to -" Spock stopped abruptly.

"Face the kind of harassment that you have?" Sofet asked.

"It is very rare, now," Spock said. Finally arriving back at the scene, Spock and Sofet discovered that Stonn and Sindess had taken venom, but Sofet's prompt summons of aid had saved their lives. The third Vulcan had fled, apparently unharmed, before the lematya had appeared. The guard went after and soon apprehended him for questioning. With the guard and the healers busy, the cliff top had been transformed from a place of contemplative refuge to a bee hive of activity, but Spock was stressed considering the possibility of two lives being lost, if he had been the cause, however inadvertently.

And then he looked up and saw Sarek alighting from an aircar, joining his guardsmen. Spock took a half step back, feeling sick. Then he stood firm, his shoulders setting. But he swallowed hard, dreading this meeting, perhaps even being disciplined before Sofet.

Sofet had tilted his head, the Vulcan equivalent of a shrug. "Well, perhaps a stint of remedial discipline will be a deterrent to any future attempts," Sofet said.

"I-"Spock began shocked, thinking of Sarek and then realizing that Sofet was speaking of the others, he said, slowly, "I hope that this situation too can be considered closed. After all, nothing of their intended actions actually occurred."

"The intent was criminal," Sofet's voice was hard. "There will have to be a hearing."

"From what I understand of the matter, according to what the guards relayed to me when I dispatched them," Sarek said, coming up to Sofet, "I quite agree."

Spock's stomach churned. He thought of Sarek's dislike of such a public event, with himself involved. He remembered his disobedience, in disregarding his Mother and her relayed order to attend Sarek. Inadvertently, he looked up the ridge to his cave, thinking of it so secure and calm, with his work there, the cup of tea he had left cooling on the desk. And he longed to be there.

Having seen to the worst of the injured, the healers came over to report to Sarek and ascertain if anything else was required. They now eyed Sofet and Spock, both dusty and trail bedraggled from their hurried trip up the trail. Spock had a long gash on his arm from his former slide down some loose rock to warn Sofet. He submitted to having it cleaned and bandaged by one of the healers associated with the patrol guard, a limited attendant versed only in trauma care. Another more prescient healer turned his gaze to Spock, one associated with the Healer's Enclave. After a moment, he took a step back as if burned.

Sarek's sharp eyes had noted the interaction. He was not entirely pleased to have a healer examine Spock under any circumstance. He was equally wary of a usually controlled healer's abrupt disengagement. "Something is amiss?"

The first healer, the one attached to the patrol service and one who normally dealt only with critical care, gave a Vulcan negative, a slight jerk of his chin to the left. "He is not seriously injured."

But the other frowned slightly. "I sense no **active** disease organisms." The stress was slight but real, particularly for an ultra controlled healer. His eyes met Sarek's. "Perhaps you should have him checked by a pediatrician. Or his human physician."

Sarek bridled at that, somehow without changing expression. That could only mean the healer sensed something outside the individual's control. He looked at Spock critically. The boy seemed to have paled from what Sarek remembered, though in the faint starlight he could not make a very good judgment. Spock's level of obvious discomfort under his scrutiny however, further raised Sarek's suspicions. "Come," Sarek said to Spock.

"I had intended to-," Spock said, taking a step back.

" **Come** ," Sarek said, and his chin jerked to the guards' aircar.

Seeing his father's darkened brow, Spock chose not to argue or disobey.

They left Sofet off outside the gates, where he had left his aircar. By the time they had arrived, Sarek had arranged for another healer. Spock definitely seemed paler than usual to him, though Sarek wondered if it was just his past week's enforced confinement at home that had robbed him of color. He consulted the one who had seen Spock recently about his weight loss and would perhaps be less provincial in his attitudes towards children, or perhaps, towards hybrids.

But the healer was little more forthcoming than the previous one. He examined Spock, regarding his patient as warily as Spock did his examiner. When the healer had finished, he seemed more confused than anything and he stepped back, as if eager to be shed of his patient. "I can only recommend rest."

"To what purpose?" Sarek asked.

"His systems are…unsettled. Rest and meditation would no doubt suffice to order them."

"Can he attend the Academy?" Sarek asked, puzzled.

"That is up to him," the healer said obliquely. He gave Sarek a sketchy nod and left.

"Of all the unhelpful, nonsensical **claptrap** …" Amanda shook her head when Sarek relayed what the healer had said, "I'm calling Mark."

"The healer said-"

"Nothing that made any sense. I'll put my faith in a medical opinion, rather than fake mystic pseudo science."

"There is nothing fake about—"

"Oh, please. Meditation! For an injured teenager!" she shook her head again in derision and went to the communications terminal.

"His injury is slight," Sarek said, but to no avail. Amanda was gone.

"I left my school things on the mountain," Spock said, willing to go back up the mountain in a sandstorm rather than face that human physician. "Now that the healer has said meditation is warranted, I believe it would be best if I-"

"You will stay here," Sarek said, knowing Amanda would not be satisfied otherwise. " **I** will get them," Sarek added. "The coordinates?"

Spock eyed Sarek warily and gave them. He reflected as Sarek left that it was probable that his father didn't want to face that human physician either.

Mark Abrams was one of only a handful of physicians practicing Federation style medicine on Vulcan. Attached to the Terran Embassy, he was in his early fifties, lean as long term human residents came to be on Vulcan, where carrying any extra ounce in that heavy gravity counted, and grizzled, with fair hair turning to gray. Knowing his patient would be reluctant to see him, he had his scanner already out as he came through the door.

"Twice in one day, this is a record," he remarked.

He listened to Amanda's explanation of the evening's events as he crossed the room, wanting to get in and out in as little time as possible, for Spock's sake, if not his own.

"Funny that this healer had nothing to say, but seemed to imply something was wrong," Abrams commented, eyes on the readings coming across his device.

Spock bristled at this utterance. "I see no humor in –" He flinched back as Abrams brought the scanner closer to him.

"Nice to see you again too," Abrams said. "As little of you as there is."

"Again?" Amanda asked. "What do you mean, twice in one day?"

"I got called out here earlier today for an issue during the Alliance meeting." Abrams said. "Failure of acclimatization in one of the guests. Spock happened to be in the garden."

"Oh," Amanda frowned but let that pass.

"And I just meant odd," Abrams said, with a tired grin. "Now how about taking a few deep breaths for me. In, out. In, out." He was frowning slightly. "Nothing to be scared of from me, is there? Try to settle down."

"What's do you mean? What's wrong?" Amanda asked anxiously.

"Easy, tiger," Abrams said, regarding the scanner dubiously. "Just some odd readings. Hard to differentiate right now. He seems a little...wired. And there are some odd dolometer readings." His eyes suddenly narrowed, focusing on the scanner. Then looked Spock over, noting the increased pallor and weight loss, watching him swallow hard at the physician's scrutiny. "Can you lay back, Spock?" he asked neutrally. I want to examine you the old fashioned way. You can put that blanket over you. I don't need to touch you directly. It's not any kind of meld. No need to worry about that."

Knowing he had little choice, and at least knowing there was little risk of a psi blind human perceiving much, even with hands on him, Spock lay back. Mark listened to heart and lungs perfunctorily. Not because he needed to, but because he wanted to prove that not every touch of his had to hurt. And then laid hands on Spock's abdomen. "Let me know if this causes any discomfort."

"Hhew!" Spock said as the breath went out of him in a pained rush.

Abrams sat back and scratched his chin, meditatively. "Thought so. Odd. Well, maybe not, considering."

"What?" Amanda asked.

"Got a fabricator nearby?" He asked her. "Nothing restricted or dangerous, just basic elements?"

"In Spock's workroom, there's one that can do chemistry," she said dubiously.

Abrams nodded, coding something into his diagnostic panel. "Plug this script into it."

She gave him a worried look but went out.

"I don't want-" Spock said, regaining his control.

"Want or not, you've got yourself in a bit of trouble," Abrams said. "Can't say I'm too surprised. So what you want and what's needed are two different things."

Amanda came back in, with a vial of tablets. Mark opened the container and took one out and handed it to Spock. "Take this. You can chew it, swallow it whole, or let it dissolve on your tongue, take your pick. But down the hatch it goes, or maybe it's the Med Center for you," he warned.

"Med Center?" Amanda said, "But the healer said he just needed to **meditate**."

"And maybe that works, for grown up Vulcans. Probably does. I don't know. But it sure hasn't worked for Spock, so far." He looked over at Spock. "You can't tell me you haven't noticed. A burning, sort of a hollow feeling? Occasional abdominal pain? Stomach-aches?"

True to form, Spock didn't answer directly, but his eyes widened in a speculation of his own.

"Maybe you thought you were hungry? Or just not hungry?"

"Mark, what **is** it?" Amanda said, losing her patience.

"Well, your son has a bit of an upset tummy."

"Mark, he's not four. And for that matter, neither am I. What are you saying? What's wrong with him?" Amanda said, crossing her arms.

Abrams shrugged. "Best that I can guess, he appears to be working himself into the Vulcan equivalent of an ulcer. At least I can see the beginnings of some irritation, here," He showed the panel of his diagnostic reader to Amanda, and then to Spock. "It's not serious. Yet. But," he nodded, "well, it could be, if it continues. Let it develop, and it could perforate his stomach; send the contents into the peritoneum. He could bleed out. End up in a world of trouble. Not a good thing. But that's worst case, much down the line and we've caught it early, long before that."

"But the healer just advised him to meditate."

"And since this sort of thing is caused in part by stress, the healer has that part right. It's probably well within the capability of the average Vulcan to heal on his own. But Spock is just a child, and one with a history of picky eating, and having his stomach turned by this and that. And I'll wager the healer thought this was more of the same."

"Is that why you were always running off to the mountains to meditate?" Amanda asked, turning suddenly to her son. "Spock, you should have told your parents!"

Eyes wide, Spock said nothing.

"Maybe he didn't really understand, Amanda." Abrams said, gently. "For all his education, he's just a child. Maybe you're expecting too much of him, you and Sarek."

"But what if meditation – or this medication - doesn't cure him?" she asked.

"Well, if it gets really bad, we could repair it surgically. But even with humans, they can usually be managed and healed without that drastic measure. So, "he looked back at Spock, "Take the tablets. Try to avoid stress."

Amanda made a strangled noise. "Avoid stress."

"Yeah, I've heard about this ruckus Suchon has raised," Abrams said.

"What ruckus?" Amanda said.

Abrams looked from Amanda to Spock, back to Amanda. "You know. He's been telling tales of his rescue." He eyed Amanda speculatively and gave a glance to Spock. "And so on."

"I don't see why everyone is so interested, or what kind of ruckus that could create from Spock just helping an old man."

"Well, Spock is Sarek's son," Abrams hastily covered. "Even Vulcans I suppose love their icons. Though it must be hard for a kid to be the focus of that attention and pressure, particularly from adults. He seems to have nothing but stress, poor kid." He shrugged, "But he's also pretty smart, and now that he knows what's going on, I'll wager he can heal himself. I'll leave a simple therapeutic diet," turning back to Amanda. And looked at Spock. "No more skipping meals. Frequent small meals are best. I'll check back in a few days, see whether there's any reversal. Give it six weeks, maybe a lot less, for a Vulcan. If Spock does as he's told, we might have this wrapped up very soon. But if he doesn't," Abrams frowned at the boy, "you could end up very sick."

"The healer said he could attend school," Amanda worried. "Even tomorrow. Should he?"

Abrams packed up his bag. "He could. If it were my kid, after this brouhaha tonight on top of everything else making the rounds about him, frankly I'd give him a day or two. He can't possibly fall far behind, can he? But if he can't miss, then he can't."

"He **can** ," Amanda said. "And what is this about something making the rounds?" She looked from Abrams to Spock.

Spock just set his jaw, looking stubborn.

Mark looked between Spock and Amanda, "Ask Sarek about that. As for Spock, what if I come over in a couple of days, and see how much headway the tablets and diet are making? And Spock's got some healing skills of his own, now that he knows what's going on with him. If it hasn't progressed, if the scanner reading looks better, then I'd say school's okay. The idea is for him to take it easy, sure. But I can't imagine sitting at home and stewing will do anything but send him up the wall."

Spock looked at his walls curiously, but forbore to ask, recognizing it another arcane human phrase. He let out a little sigh, now that the exam was over, and the physician would soon be leaving. He thought this could have been worse.

"Thank you, Mark." Amanda said soberly. "To think the healers were just going to let it go and not say anything!"

"This is one of those things that, being exacerbated by stress, probably they don't deal well with. It's not logical. They gave you hints. I guess a sensible Vulcan would have already heeded them. But this also probably isn't any more common among Vulcan children than among human ones. You caught them in a blind spot. Spock probably too. I suspect," he eyed his young patient, "he often has an upset stomach over one thing or another. He just didn't notice it was from a different reason."

"Oh, Spock," Amanda sighed. "What next?"

"Sleep, for him." Abrams said. "Amanda, how about seeing me out?"

She took the hint for a private conference.

When the door closed behind them, Spock sat considering a moment. Then he took the potion out of his mouth, crossed the room and tossed it and the vial in the recycler. And then he came back to his bed, looking from the door out of which his mother had disappeared to the long windows, where the flash of his father's aircar through the forceshields would signal his return.

He drew the coverlet from his bed around him, but he still felt sick and chilled from all that had gone on. It had been a long day, the altercation at school, his father's disturbing return home somehow displeased with him, the long hike up the mountains, the altercation there, being examined by healers and the hated human physician. And now the sure certainty of discipline from his father, perhaps doubly, between this afternoon's altercation or whatever had prompted his disapproval then and this disastrous evening, his disobedience and then a second altercation. And now discipline from his mother, for disregarding her instructions about seeing Sarek and now not swallowing and then throwing away the physician's evil potion. He pulled the coverlet tighter. But he could not get warm. His breath shortened and his stomach ached.

He put his head on his drawn up knees, the coverlet around him like a shield, trying to control and contain feelings that seemed to rise up and overwhelm him. There were times that he wanted his mother's comfort, remembered from a young child, so _much_. And yet he knew it was wrong. Even if he did express it to her, there was an equal chance she would remind him of his control, and even discipline rather than comfort him. Because he had chosen the Vulcan way. And it was her duty to see that he followed it.

And there were times when he wanted his father too. And there was no uncertainty about how Sarek would react to that need.

It was a terrible, infantile thing, to be so needy at his age. He had mastered the Disciplines based on all the tests; he was attending the Science Academy; he had been fulfilling the duties of the Heir to Surak, sitting on the bridge of a Vulcan patrol ship with phaser weapons under his fingers. And yet the emotions rising in him now, choking him, making the bile rise in his throat, were as encompassing as if he were no more than three. He wanted to rage, he wanted to shout, he wanted to tear the tapestries and arrays of pre-Reform weapons down from his walls and raze the Fortress to ruins. He did not quite know what he did want, but he did know he did not want this. The feelings grew within him, frustration, need, rebellion, rejection. At times this life seemed impossible to him, incapable of growing, sustaining or nourishing him, as indigestible as poison.

At that he leapt up, ran to the bathroom, and threw up everything his stomach contained. Pressing the control to reduce the contents of the receptacle to their essential atoms, he then cleaned his teeth, took a shower, dressed in fresh nightwear, and went shiveringly back under the coverlet. But he could not get warm. The chill that encompassed him was not environmental and not even physiological. He looked out the nearly floor to ceiling windows of his room, showing the Llangons and the starfield above, and felt caught like trapped animal. He wanted to flee; he wanted to leave this place that had no true place for him. He wanted to die.

And yet he couldn't do that.

He knew what he had to do.

He had to control these emotions.

He closed his eyes and began, once again, to reiterate the facts of his position.

In spite of his mother's heritage, physiologically, he was Vulcan dominant. He was his father's son, more than his mother's, and his father's culture had rules. And benefits. Vulcan culture was superior, even his mother agreed with that: little crime, no wars for millennia, a population that, with the help of the Disciplines, had thrown off a violent and savage history. It was logical and beneficial to emulate his father's culture. Even some humans attempted it, without Vulcan physiology. Wholly apart from his physiology making it a natural choice, logically speaking he should emulate the Vulcan Way.

And then there was the personal side of his father's heritage. He was his father's heir. And his father required an heir. If he did not follow in his father's footsteps and accept the Vulcan Way, his father would be without an heir. Sarek would then have to acquire a replacement for him. Possibly take another bondmate, which he didn't think his mother would accept. She could Challenge. Sarek might die then. His mother certainly would blame him. Or his father might die if his mother left him without a bondmate. Or Sarek might die attempting a new bond when he was still bonded to his mother.

If he rejected the Vulcan Way, his mother would lose her chosen bondmate. He would lose his home and his father's regard. His father could lose his life. His clan could lose the possibility of an heir, a living legacy since the time of Surak and before. All because he, Spock, could not control his emotions and had refused the beneficial, logical Vulcan Way.

And had his mother not risked her life, his father not risked his bondmate in a difficult dangerous pregnancy, risking his own life to some extent, to produce an heir, himself, to fulfill that destiny? How could he deny their joint risk for mere selfish, childish behavior?

He had no choice. Follow the Vulcan way, do the logical thing, or risk personal destruction for his family and the potential end of a clan legacy.

Part of him rose up anew, enraged at that conclusion – _he wouldn't be trapped, he wanted a choice_ – but part of him was comforted by the strict binary nature of the options. Beneficent, logical Vulcan, or the chaos and violence of selfish emotions, which might destroy his family and his clan's future.

It **was** beneficial; it **was** logical. For him as well as for all Vulcan. It was the correct choice. He went through the logical chains like a mantra. Then he went through the arguments again. And again. It was helping. He was heartbroken; he was sore in body and in mind. But he was calming, his respiration slowing, the cramping in his stomach easing, the shivering leaving him for a gradual warmth. He knew these arguments. He had been through them, over and over again, as far back as he could remember, from the time he had begun to be required to make a choice, and could critically think of the options. They were familiar and known to him. That very familiarity was a comfort to him. He hugged the tattered chains of logic in his mind, a familiar, well known security blanket, even as he hugged the lematya coverlet to his body.

And eventually his breathing evened. His body slumped. And he was finally, exhaustedly, asleep.

 _To be continued…_

 _Review, review, review_

1 Yesteryear – Sarek tells Spock he must pass the Kahs Wan on the first trial unlike other candidates who can bail and then retake the test, or not be considered Vulcan. Rather than assume Sarek was particularly insufferable with his half human son, I've taken it as a requirement of their heritage and Sarek's and Spock's position. While this episode is part of the animated series and not TOS canon, it was written by D.C. Fontana, who also wrote Journey to Babel. You can't get more canonical than that.


	11. Chapter 11

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 11**

Standing before the door in the Fortress' Great Hall, Amanda put out her hand in a rare gesture on Vulcan. "Thank you, Mark."

"My pleasure." He stepped forward to take it, then held her hand a little longer than mere convention. Amanda didn't seem to notice, distracted by other things.

Do you really think the tablets and rest will cure him?"

"Likely so. And we'll monitor him. Make sure he doesn't get worse."

She made a face. "He'll hate that. It will probably make him eat even less."

"Maybe I'll show him how to monitor it himself, with a scanner," Abrams offered, studying her, "so he won't be stressed by frequent exams."

"That would probably help," she mused and then looked up into his face, her eyes meeting his directly, her voice suddenly stern. "But don't ever do that again, Mark."

He dropped her hand, taking a step back. "What?"

"You know. Criticizing my parenting in front of Spock. You've done that before. I don't like it. You have no right to do that."

Abrams straightened, "Do you mean-"

"When you said Sarek and I expect too much of him."

"I believe you do," he said stiffly.

Amanda tossed her head, frowning. "How would **you** know? You hardly ever see Spock."

"Maybe that gives me the objectivity to see him clearly," Abrams pointed out.

"I know that he dislikes you – well, all physicians," she said, pacing, thinking. "If it's some ploy to get him to accept you, siding with him against his parents, well, it's not going to work. He still won't like you. And it ticks me off. It's unfair."

"Unfair?"

"To me."

"I was thinking of Spock," he said pointedly. "Anyway, I'd never think that it would. And that wasn't my intent. But I'm sorry. I suppose I lost my objectivity for a moment, and I spoke out of turn."

She halted, staring at him. "You can't really believe we expect too much of him. Why he could have gone into the Academy a year ago. We held him back a year, because he was so young. And he could have taken two courses of study, but Sarek and the dean of the VSA decided to limit him to one, because of his youth. Why, we're holding him **back** , not pushing him."

Abrams gave a little snort of amusement at this, and Amanda's eyes flashed. "What's that for?"

"Even geniuses can be very dumb." He looked her over, head to foot. "Given the right incentive. Or if the stakes are high enough." He sighed. "Or maybe I'm being unkind again, and you're just too close to see it."

"What do **you** know about raising a Vulcan child?" she accused.

"Nothing. But I don't think your boy is entirely Vulcan anyway, in spite of your husband's pushing him to be that. So what does it matter?"

Amanda glared at him. "So this is about Sarek? I know you don't like him."

"I don't dislike him," Abrams said evenly. "Not entirely."

"That's big of you."

"Mandy, **you** love him. Maybe that means you aren't seeing too clearly there either."

"That's enough, Mark," she snapped, took a step away and then back, arms wrapped around herself, hands hugging her elbows. "Oh, I don't know what to do. If I'm too human with Spock, it's wrong. If I'm too Vulcan with him that's wrong as well. And if I'm in the middle, I'm inconsistent and that's wrong too. Half the time I'm furious with him for being so Vulcan that he rejects me. And then when he is a brat and acts out, I punish him all the more. Not just for being a brat but for being unVulcan. And he knows it, and I think he hates me for it. I don't know what I'm doing."

"He doesn't hate you," Abrams said, watching her with clinical eyes, under which stood a deep compassion. "When he could take his eyes off me, worried as he was about what I was going to do to him, his eyes were all for you."

"That doesn't mean anything," Amanda said scornfully. "He was disobedient to me earlier this evening. He knows I should punish him for it. He's waiting for that. That's all it was."

Abrams paused, eyes steady on her. "Will you?"

"How can I, when he is sick? But he deliberately defied an order and he and I both know that merits it. Even requires it." She frowned. "But I don't think withdrawing the parental bond even works anymore with him, at least not from me. He's gone too far in the Disciplines. He can shield against it, I think. And I hate doing it. But if I choose something else, that's wrong too."

Mark frowned, his eyes grave. "I don't think you should."

"You know how willful, how disobedient he can be when he chooses. He won't listen to me. Sometimes he even disobeys Sarek."

"The kid's got guts; I'll give him that."

"He can be uncontrollable."

"Amanda," Abrams shook his head.

"Sarek and I have to have some way of checking him. And that's the traditional Vulcan Way of disciplining a child."

"I've seen Sarek teaching him that Vulcan Way," Abrams said coldly. "And I consider it cruel."

Amanda looked up at him, her eyes suddenly full of tears. "So you think I'm cruel?"

Mark took her hand again, moving close. "Mandy."

She stepped away from him. "Don't."

He curled his hands into fists in frustration. "I wasn't trying to—"

"Maybe not. But I **love** my husband."

"And you so belong to him that you can't so much as touch another's hand in friendship?" Abrams flung back, frustrated in turn.

"That wasn't friendship," she said to him, raising knowing eyes to his.

Abrams flushed. "Compassion then."

"You don't love me," she said, shaking her head. "Oh I get that you'd like to think so, maybe, at times. But what really attracts you is this," she jerked her head back, at the huge Great Hall, hung with tapestries, banners and weapons, the Fortress around them. "It adds a little reflective glow to its occupants. You think Sarek is the Beast and I'm the girl you're going to save."

"That isn't true."

She regarded him sadly, knowingly. "No? Maybe it's just a little true, Mark."

He didn't answer, his eyes wounded.

She sighed. "I've seen it before. Not just from you. Because Sarek lives in a castle, and is who he is, somehow that makes me a princess. With all the collateral nonsense to human perceptions. And men who wouldn't look at me or think of me twice, suddenly romanticize the situation. And themselves. Or they do it for spite, against Vulcan and particularly Sarek. I'm the flag they want to snatch, under the nose of the most Vulcan of Vulcans." She shook her head. "Well, I'm a very ordinary woman, not especially beautiful, not princess material. I didn't sign up to act out anyone's fantasy, and I won't stand for it." She gave him a look. "Especially not from you, Mark. You know better. I put up with it enough from petty diplomats. And this is not a fairy tale."

"I never thought it was, Mandy," he said heavily, his meaning plain. "At times, I just feel sorry for you."

She shook her head, doubly wounded at that. "Don't. Even if it's what some of those romance writers claim, I'm still not a damsel in distress."

"So that's why your eyes were filled with tears a minute ago? Because you're not in distress?"

"Don't you dare use my emotions against me!" she flared.

"Is that's Sarek's exclusive privilege as well?" Abrams snapped back.

She straightened. "Mark, I think you had better leave."

"I'm sorry for Spock, too," he said.

She held out her hand, pointedly, formally, her blue eyes cold. "Thank you for seeing him."

Mark took it, but with no formality, and held it at his side. "Amanda, can I just suggest you give Spock a break? Transitioning to university is hard sometimes even for much older teens than Spock. And he's still such a kid."

In spite of herself, Amanda used her free hand to wipe her eyes. "This was supposed to be a happy time," she complained. "A celebration of all his successes. **Not** stressful. Oh, why can't things ever be normal?"

"Because **you're** not normal, Mandy." Abrams said in frustration. "Not you, not Sarek, and certainly not Spock."

"Oh, that can't be true! We can be. We have been. And that's all I want. A normal, happy life."

Mark sighed as tears spilled down her cheeks. "You didn't sign up for normal, Mandy. I don't think you could. And maybe Spock can't either. But like I said, maybe sometimes you and Sarek expect too much of him. And maybe even of yourselves."

Amanda stepped back, shaking her hand free, rubbing her sleeve across her face. And then the door to the Great Hall began to open.

xxx

On the mountain, Sarek had followed Spock's accurate coordinates. He entered an extremely well hidden cave, traversed into only by slipping through several vertical shards of rock, sufficient to deter any large predator. And well concealed enough to be overlooked by the average Vulcan. Sarek himself would not have bothered if he hadn't possessed the requisite coordinates to believe that there was any sanctuary behind those closely spaced columns. But now he stood in the center of what appeared to be an oasis of civilization. A light left burning in Spock's hasty leave-taking revealed the computer pad set up on a horizontal slab serving as a desk, still glowing with an abandoned calculation. Beside Spock's computer pad was a half eaten cereal bar, neatly spread on its packaging, and a cup of tea. A rock with a seat sized depression in it stood before the makeshift desk. In a niche in one of the rock walls, he noted supplies: a small cache of food and water, well wrapped, with a faint film of rock dust on them that labeled them as unused for some time, perhaps emergency supplies saved in case a sandstorm trapped the occupant within for some time. A tiny camp stove for making tea. A small first aid kit and a toiletries kit. There was also a bedroll tied up in a web of netting to protect it from dust, waiting in readiness on a horizontal ledge of rock. Beside it was the knapsack Sarek had seen Spock wearing on his mountain hikes. There was little else, but in a way, that satisfied Sarek. It was a very Vulcan space, minimalistic, and yet comfortable as well as defensible. As safe as such a place could be in this dangerous area. He almost envied his son this pied-à-terre.

Sarek went to pick up the computer pad and then to the bed alcove to take the knapsack sitting there. And there he saw what destroyed the complacent Vulcan satisfaction he had been experiencing. For there, by the bedroll, underneath it in fact, ready for when the bedding was spread out was a Terran paper book, an ancient nemesis of Sarek's: a well worn copy of The Annotated Alice in Wonderland.

Sarek felt the knapsack slip through his fingers, even as the breath slipped from his lungs in a huff. Even in this very Vulcan space, even with all this satisfying and yet somehow disquieting evidence both of his son's seeming determination and skill to make himself a home in the Llangons, here was this seed of illogical Terran contamination. After studying astrophysics with the most eminent researchers on Vulcan at the Science Academy, why would his son, his Vulcan son, having allegedly (based on eminent tutors Sarek had chosen and yet in the face of this could hardly credit) mastered the Disciplines and passed to advanced education, choose to read himself to sleep with Terran nonsense fiction he had surely committed to his eidetic memory before the age of five?

Sarek simply could not understand it.

And even if he could understand it, he could **never** accept it.

His **wife** read Terran fiction before she slept. His **human** wife.

Vulcans, having mastered the Disciplines, invariably meditated before retiring.

He had told himself, when his infant son had picked up this habit, that training, discipline, the Vulcan Way, would soon eliminate this human aberration, this contamination. He had never understood his son's interest in fiction, nor could he approve of him wasting valuable time in pursuit of it. A Vulcan as young as Spock had a lifetime's of imperative knowledge to acquire. Recreational reading had no place in that.

But apparently Spock had not learned that lesson, nor practiced those disciplines. Not even here, in this bastion of the Forge.

Sarek closed his eyes against the damning evidence.

Sarek picked up the knapsack. There was nothing in it but another cereal bar, and an orange. Breakfast? Even that offended Sarek. He ate Terran food, of course. He had procured the gardens for his wife's maintenance, and she ate the food, and often prepared it for the family, along with Vulcan foods from their part of the garden. Sarek saw nothing wrong with her preparing and serving both, for himself and their son. Vulcans could eat human foods and many of them were quite palatable to the Vulcan taste.

But he had always assumed, away from home, Spock would choose and eat a purely Vulcan diet. Why ever would he not? When his son's whole existence and future in Vulcan society was predicated on him being Vulcan, and living the Vulcan Way he had sworn to follow, why would he embrace human factors in any form? Yet here was this orange. And the cereal bars – they were a mix of many grains, Vulcan and Terran both, and raisins from the grapes in the garden. There was nothing actually **wrong** with them, so far as they went. But Sarek considered them poor and inadequate nutrition to serve as the sole evening meal, or even breakfast for that matter, for a growing child. His child.

And with that, Sarek rejected the cave and what it represented, however Vulcan in itself it seemed. Spock was heir to the ruling clan of Vulcan. Carefully trained to the Vulcan Way. Lavishly educated. Yet here he was, for all intents and purposes, living in a cave. Eating what Sarek could only consider inadequate scraps. As if he were a homeless orphan of the Skegallan clan, the wanderers of Vulcan, the outcasts and rejects from respectable clans. And reading Terran fiction. Sarek did not understand it, refused to accept the corollary to that logic that hinted itself to his mind.

No. It seemed no matter how painstakingly he had tried to ensure Spock was guided through the treacherous dangers of outworlder influence to the safe haven of the Vulcan Way, no matter how many milestones Spock passed of discipline and education, his mother's influences were ineradicable.

Ineradicable. The thought chilled him.

He picked up the knapsack and went home, determined somehow to deal with it.

And then found the Terran physician in the Great Hall. Another undesired aberration.

"Hello, Sarek," Abrams said, with a purely perfunctory smile that wasn't the lease sincere. And that Sarek found even more unnecessary given the emotion it purported was false. They had never been friendly.

"Doctor," Sarek said, with frozen control. With his discoveries in the cave, he had momentarily forgotten about his wife bringing in her human physician. Then he took in the expression on his wife's face. She was upset, traces of tears on her cheeks, and he wondered why.

He examined the human physician's face and saw stress and discomfort there as well. That was doubly concerning. And the atmosphere of the hall was charged with the lingering of some strong emotions.

Sarek had discounted the need for the human physician and assumed it was merely his wife's illogical concern again manifesting itself. If the healers had found nothing but a need for rest, then what need for a psi-blind human to look at Spock? But he could see now there was a telling tension apparent in both their expressions and body language and in the psionic ambient. The human must have found something. Otherwise they would be smiling. "Spock is not—"

Abrams quickly explained, making light as possible of the condition, even while stressing the need for Spock to have the chance to recover from it.

"I have never heard of this malady. This is caused by poor food?" Sarek asked, going to the most logical cause in his mind, given his distaste for Spock's recent dietary habits.

"I wouldn't say entirely that," Abrams said, "though it can exacerbate a problem. More likely a combination of that, stress, and not eating much."

Sarek eyed his wife pointedly, reminded over their concern regarding Spock's diet.

"But its main cause is considered to be stress." Abrams shrugged. "Truthfully, considering all the pressure Spock's under, I'm surprised he hasn't come up with one of these before."

Sarek's eyes narrowed. "But the healers found nothing."

"Not quite. They passed it off as emotional. As it is in some part. For them, to be cured with meditation and discipline. I suppose that might suffice, for Vulcans. But in a child, well –"

"Spock **has** been trained in the Disciplines," Sarek said.

"He's just a boy, Sarek," Abrams said. "I really don't understand the point of trying to make him into an adult at thirteen. Of course, I didn't understand it when he had to pass that Kahs Wan survival test at five."

"That is our way," Sarek said.

Abrams mouth hardened. "So your wife tells me," Abrams said, sparing a glance for Amanda. "And so I've observed."

Amanda flushed, discomfited.

Sarek didn't like this physician upsetting his wife. "I will contact the healers to confirm your diagnosis," Sarek said.

"By all means, get a second opinion," Abrams said, recognizing the dismissal. He leaned down to pick up his bag. "But scanners don't lie. And I'd wait till tomorrow if you plan to bring anyone out here. Spock has had enough of a hard day, from what I gather." He turned toward the door, knowing it was useless to try to talk to Sarek about his son. He had prior experience with that.

"Good night, Mandy," He met her eyes. Predictably, she just nodded, and turned away, moving to her husband's side. Abrams set his jaw at that and walked out the door.

xxx

"Your healers," Amanda accused, when the door had safely closed behind the physician, "were willing to let him go undiagnosed and untreated-"

Sarek closed his eyes, dropping Spock's knapsack on a nearby table. "Enough, Amanda. There has been more than sufficient senseless damaging conflict this evening."

Amanda frowned, looking at her husband, wondering at his weary manner. "Those other boys…the ones attacked by the lematya. They will recover?"

"Apparently so." Sarek said. "But it seems there is no limit to the fallout from Suchon's public statements."

"I'm glad, even if they were intending to hurt my son. But I can't answer for my own behavior if I ever come across them. But speaking of Suchon, maybe it's time for **me** to have a conversation with that individual," Amanda said ominously, "If his ridiculous statements are causing this kind of resentment against Spock."

"Negative. If we try to stop him talking, then there are those that will wonder why."

"I don't care."

"I must. And now Council-" Sarek stopped abruptly.

"What about Council?" she asked.

Sarek decided she would find out soon enough anyway. However, he deliberately chose to put the most innocuous light on the circumstances. "They wish to speak to Spock about Suchon's assertions."

"Oh, will it never end?" Amanda said. She picked up the knapsack and feeling the orange inside, emptied it, setting the computer pad netbooks aside. "He can have his school materials tomorrow." She tossed the orange meditatively and held it up for Sarek. "So much for surviving off the land," she said, with a certain arch criticism.

Sarek frowned at this slur against Spock and his following of Vulcan tradition. "He cannot have time to forage for food, do his schoolwork and also travel up and down the mountain to and from the Science Academy every day," he said, exasperated. "It is not that I disapprove that he is bringing food from home rather than scavenging for it in the mountains. That is a logical choice. It is the **type** of food he is bringing."

"I know," Amanda agreed, startling Sarek. But then she continued, proving her reasons differed slightly from his own. "It's hardly adequate or proper nutrition for a growing teenager."

"Quite," Sarek said, relieved at least that she was on his side in this regardless of specifics. "And also the circumstances he has created that have led to these inadequate measures. These excursions have become overly frequent."

Amanda's eyes widened. "But I thought it was his inviolate right? Tradition and all."

"Spock has other duties and requirements. He is not a pre-Reform Vulcan whose only concern is survival. Ancient traditions are not the only factor meant to govern one's behavior. Modern requirements and conventions must also be considered as having their due. I believe the incidence of Forge trips has become excessive. Spock is possibly taking advantage of tradition."

"He's not neglecting his schoolwork though. That was your only concern before."

"No, but he is now sacrificing his health in a way that cannot be good for a still growing child."

"Well," Amanda said, brows raised in astonishment. "We seem to be in agreement on a number of things I would never have believed tonight."

"Let us ensure that we both communicate them to Spock," Sarek said grimly, "in a way he comes to fully understand and obey."

"That might be asking too much," Amanda said doubtfully. "Lighting striking twice, such as you and me agreeing on childcare? Well, there's always a chance for a miracle. But **three** times?"

"Spock **will** obey," Sarek decreed.

Amanda thought of her son deliberately heading out the gate in defiance of her and Sarek's request for an interview. "Are we speaking of the same boy?" she asked.

Sarek, in no mood to countenance levity, just shook his head and went upstairs. After a moment, she followed, glad that at least for now, Spock had a doctor's prohibition against immediately resuming his Forge trips. If he would obey that, she thought with some doubt, at least it would eliminate putting him and Sarek into direct conflict. Knowing how Spock bridled at her when she sought to curtail some Vulcan behavior his heritage allowed, she wondered how he would take it from his father.

"I'm going to check on him," she said, continuing upward as Sarek turned into their own landing.

Sarek paused, a fleeting irritation crossing his features. "Amanda, he is long past requiring such monitoring."

"Maybe **I** am not. I'm still going to check on him," she insisted.

"You will only waken him if he is asleep."

She gave him a look. "Then I'll wake him." She went up the stairs. After a moment, Sarek followed her. She went through the outer rooms of Spock's suite into his bedroom. Sarek paused at the workroom, expecting his son to wake, if not at her presence, then at his. Spock had never really learned to sleep through his mother's bed checks. But this time he neither moved nor spoke as Amanda entered, not even when she raised the coverlet over him and drew it higher on his shoulders. At that, Sarek stepped over to look down on his son. He had expected the boy to be feigning sleep, but he could see he was truly out, face drawn with shadows under his eyes. He had not really regained his lost weight.

Amanda tucked the coverlet more soundly around him, her face tender with love. She bent to kiss him, lips barely brushing the raven silk of his hair.

Sarek shifted slightly but let it go. He had no desire to speak and let Spock find both his parents hovering over him in a ridiculous emotional display. Sarek caught his wife's gaze and jerked his chin to the door.

She frowned at him but left. It was only when they were outside the outer door of Spock's suite that she spoke. "I don't want him to go to school tomorrow."

Sarek pondered that. On the one hand, it was unVulcan. On the other, Spock had been through a great deal. And it would give Sarek time to decide how to handle the situation with Council. "Very well."

She paused outside their door. "Are you coming to bed?"

He was weary, he reflected. And rest would be most welcome. But he had a number of things to consider. "I must meditate for a period."

She sighed. "Well, I'll read a little while and wait up for you."

Sarek turned back to her, heartsick in his own way and needing the answer, though he had asked and heard it before. He never had quite understood it. "Amanda. Why do you read books which contain no useful information and which you have previously read?"

"I've told you this before. It's relaxing. I like to read before I go to sleep."

"Would not meditation better serve your purpose?"

"I'm human, Sarek," she said, turning into their doorway, "Sometimes I need to turn off my brain, so to speak, and the outside world, and escape."

Sarek bridled at that. "Escape?"

"The cares of the day. Whatever," she said, and began to take down her hair. "That's why I read Jane Austen. After a day of cut throat faculty jealousies, and you'll never convince me that the Science Academy is entirely immune - **And** Vulcan snobbery, don't deny it; it does exist - **And** Federation politics, which have their own social knife work, blowing up into conflicts and even wars, nothing is more prosaic and soothing than the provincial eighteenth century social concerns that Austen obsesses over. And makes ironic sport of. I suppose I like it because it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my life. Or that in making ironic commentary of hers, she helps me deal with my own."

Sarek pondered that. "You wish to escape your life."

She took up her hairbrush. "Don't take that as a threat to our bond. I just need to remove myself from the world, for an interval, so that then I can deal with it with a more objective mind. Just like you do with your meditation."

"Not quite," Sarek said dryly.

"And there's that Vulcan snobbery again," she said, her lips twitching. "'Oh, how do I love thee? Let me **count** the ways.' But that's **not** one of them, my husband," she advised him.

Sarek ignored the teasing. "You don't read Alice in Wonderland," Sarek ventured.

She was nonplussed at that. "Well, I have. I love it. But not usually before bed. Sarek, that book is full of logical trivia and satire."

"Satire…regarding logic," Sarek said slowly.

"Well, yes. Social satire, but also logical satire and puzzles. If you know how to interpret it. Lewis Carroll – well, that was a pen name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was the author - was a logician and mathematician at Oxford." She frowned at him. "I've told you all this before."

"If logic was his career, why then would he be satirical of its nature?" Sarek demanded.

She paused to consider that, hairbrush in mid-air. "Well, I suppose that was recreation for him too. He thought it would be amusing. And he was amused by it."

"You do not satirize your own work," Sarek said.

She stifled a yawn. "I suspect I'm not facile enough to look at it that objectively. And I don't have the time. Dodgson was a bachelor." She made a face. "He didn't have a Vulcan spouse and child to plague him. The life of an English Don, I suspect, was far simpler than that of a modern university professor, or even the wife of a diplomat. And the mother of that diplomat's son." She frowned at her husband. "It's humorous, Sarek. But it's an intellectual book, too. Why the sudden interest in Alice?"

"It is not my interest," Sarek qualified.

"Oh, not that again." She shook her head. "I didn't notice the book in his bed."

"It wasn't in his bed," he said.

"Wherever. Sarek, hasn't Spock proven his intellectual ability to you yet?"

"Nor is it of intellect that I am concerned."

She scowled at that. "Spock deserves some fun. Surely reading is an innocuous enough pastime."

"I wonder, my wife, how you can possibly conclude either."

She put the brush down. "I'd thought that once he made it to the Science Academy, we were going to stop arguing about these things? He's earned the freedom of the Forge, hasn't he? Well, I should imagine that now he's also earned some leisure time for himself when his over-tired brain needs a break."

"That is the purpose of meditation."

She stared at him. "So that's why you wanted to know why I read instead of meditate? It was because of Spock. Why do you reject any and every trait that my son shares with me? He's my son too."

"I do not reject them in you. But we have agreed Spock must be Vulcan."

Amanda shook her head. "No. You gave me all the logical reasons why Spock should be Vulcan, and I agreed that if he chose that, I'd go along. I don't go along with you damning him for a minor aberration like reading fiction before bed."

"He has other duties."

"Well, if he has fulfilled them, and it seems to me he's way ahead of your schedule, what is the harm in his taking a few minutes for himself? When he was younger, you argued that he hadn't mastered your Disciplines. Well he supposedly has, now that he's passed to the Science Academy."

"That is debatable," Sarek said.

She flushed, thinking of Spock walking out the gate, defying Sarek's order to attend him. "Sarek. I really don't want to fight tonight. Please."

He looked at her. "Nor do I, my wife."

"I just want you to hold me."

He looked over at her, a tear dropping from her lashes onto her cheek, and he crossed the room to sit beside her. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her.

She looked up at him, blue eyes grave. "Tell me everything is going to be all right. I trust you. I'd believe you."

He thought of Council, yet to be broached with Spock. Of dealing with Spock's sudden illness and needs in a way that honored both tradition and his duty as a parent. And he had no words for her.

He kissed her instead, a distraction he suspected she would accept. And she turned into his arms and kissed him back.

And then he picked her up and took her to bed. Lost himself in her, as she did with him, touch turning to passion turning to fulfillment. A purely physical and emotional comfort that he gave to his wife and accepted from her in turn. The irony that he denied even the childish equivalent of emotional comfort to his son in his mother's touch was lost on him. Irony being somewhat, or at least at some times, beyond some Vulcans' ability to calculate and comprehend when it didn't fit their mindset.

Afterwards, when she was sleeping, he rose to meditate. Out on the parapets of the ancient Fortress, he looked up at the star field, up at the high pass on the Llangons, where Spock had his cave, the Alice book waiting there still, among all the signs of Vulcan mountain-craft.

He thought of Council's upcoming demands, and his uncertainty of how Spock could perform in the face of them. He thought of his wife's son, who had to be Vulcan in spite of his mother's heritage. His mind threshed the arguments. His heart pounded with the stress of it, fight or flight responses he suppressed with difficulty.

But the answers still refused to come.

 _To be continued…_

 _Review, review, review…_

 _Note because 20+ page chapters seem to be too much for some online readers, based on the response to the last chapter, I've broken this one up into 2. So that adds an extra chapter._


	12. Chapter 12

**A Son of Surak**

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 12

Sarek was still on the parapets some hours before dawn. He had no answers still. But he was meditating somewhat more at peace when a flash from the forcescreens heralded the arrival of several vehicles. Sarek straightened in potential alarm. The forcescreens were coded to only give automatic entry from cleared transponders. He was rapidly calculating if and how that security could had been breached to admit these early morning unheralded callers, eyes narrowed to discern them, prepared for a rapid defense, stepping down from his vantage point in near attack mode, when he recognized the Council emblazon upon two of the vehicles, and another with the emblazon of the Healers' Enclave.

The overt fight went out of him in an instant, even though his pulse still pounded in his ears. He knew what this portended. He just had not expected it to come so soon.

He turned from the parapets and walked across the rooftop gardens down to the level of Spock's suite. Here his son's balcony doors led out onto the upper terrace gardens. Sarek's hand on the door was sufficient to gain him entry.

He moved quietly; he too had learned desert bred skills. Habit, trained to reflex. And when he chose, he could barrier his shields to near invisibility even to a sensitive telepath. Though he'd never been very successful in his few attempts to catch his son asleep. The boy had always slept lightly, in addition to having exceptional psi sensitivity. He generally woke.

But this one time Spock drowsed on, his breathing light and even. He was still drawn and shadow-eyed, but Sarek sensed he was sleeping peacefully for once, sans the unVulcan dreams that had plagued him from infancy. Sarek thought of Council gathering down below, as if they were a hostile intruder. His temper flared at the necessity of waking his son.

And Spock looked very young, child-like under the black, lematya-embroidered coverlet, wrapped in the rose sheets whose faint odor of silk still made Sarek's nose wrinkle in distaste, and wearing faded Terran waffle weave pajamas imprinted with tiny starships. Sarek could see the collar of the shirt was slightly frayed. He was surprised at that neglect. Amanda was usually better at childcare, fussy about ensuring worn clothes were tossed in the recycler and replaced. Perhaps she'd given that task over to Spock in his teen years, and he hadn't bothered, careless of the frayed and faded cotton. Regardless of the ragged clothing, Spock appeared so comfortable and peaceful Sarek was doubly reluctant to wake him. He heard a guard speaking below, a voice answering. Reminding him that he did not have that option.

"Spock."

Spock blinked and stirred. His eyes opened and he stared at Sarek, confused and then alarmed. "Father. What is wrong?"

Sarek didn't quite know how to answer that.

"Is it the Romulans?" Spock sat up abruptly, the coverlet dropping from his shoulders. "Have they come over the Neutral Zone at last? Do I need to rejoin the Patrol? I can be ready-"

Sarek stared at his son, nonplussed; amazed that Spock had such concerns. And that he would think he'd be joining the Vulcan Fleet, internships aside, that Sarek would put a child out in the middle of a violent conflict. "Hold," he said softly, and put a restraining hand on Spock's arm, keeping him in bed. The arm was so slight Sarek's fingers closed entirely around it, over lapping themselves.

Spock waited.

Sarek drew a breath, still reluctant to speak the words that would yield Spock to this necessity. Especially when he had no idea what the outcome might be. He was usually better prepared than this for dealing with his son's issues.

Spock was staring down at the hand holding him. It was unusual for Sarek to touch him. The older the child, the less the need. Then he raised his eyes to meet Sarek's. "It is not the Romulans?"

Sarek jerked his chin to the left in a Vulcan negative.

"Then what can it be, Father?"

"It is Council."

Spock sat back at that, leaning against the headboard of his bed, blinking quizzically. The tension left his body. "Council?" He sounded puzzled and somewhat irritated. He looked out the windows at the still dark sky.

Sarek nodded. "They want something of you."

"But what has Council to do with me?" Spock asked, flicking a brow. He let out a little sigh, a half repressed and childish yawn at what he apparently perceived was a reprieve from a dire emergency. "It is not even dawn." He pulled in the corners of his mouth, but irony tinged his voice. "The High Council does not typically convene so early."

"I am concerned you have had little chance to recover from yesterday's events."

Spock paused in catching himself rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He put his hands at his sides and blinked. "I'm well enough. But what can they want?"

"They want you to do for them, what you did for Suchon."

Whatever dire fates Spock had been imagining for this early wakening, this had apparently not been one of them. For a moment Spock stared at his father, his brows rising in astonishment. Then his mouth quirked, just a bit, before he again rigidly controlled it. "Really. Do they intend to have themselves all hit with rocks in a windstorm? Regardless of the distinction that individual believed it conferred, and this desire on their part to emulate him, I am not sure that I can drag the entirety of Council to safety."

"This is not humorous," Sarek said gravely.

"But what can they want of me, Father?" Spock asked, brows lowering predictably at that reproof. "Surely not what I did for Suchon."

"They want you to detect lematya at a distance."

Spock let out a little sigh, his mouth widening in an inadvertent 'O'.

Sarek watched him grimly. Waiting for something he dared not consider. A confession? Alarm at being caught in a practical joke that had turned on itself? Concern at being asked to replicate the impossible?

"What fol-" Spock repressed whatever pejorative he had intended. "Have they nothing better with which to concern themselves than that?"

Of all the responses Sarek had thought Spock would manifest to this news, of guilt, alarm, or concern, derision was something he had never considered. "By apparent evidence, no. They have the right to set tests," Sarek warned. "Although, you could possibly refuse." Sarek left that trailing, his eyes giving a warning.

Spock frowned, looking up at his father. "If I refuse, they will believe I was lying to Suchon."

Sarek tilted a brow in agreement. "Probable."

Spock sighed, obviously rankled at this. "I had not thought the whole of the High Council was susceptible to the gossiped tales of a _Xhanzrie_ -dazzled old man. And Vulcans claim humans are overly emotional." He rubbed his eyes again, and cut Sarek a look. "I thought your coming in the pre-dawn meant something **serious** had occurred. Life or death, not this-"

"Spock," Sarek said, quietly appalled and yet unwilling to get into this with Council on his doorstep and his unpredictable son in this quixotic mood. "You must not share these views with Council."

Spock gave him a look Sarek was well familiar with at such a reproof. "I know my duty, Father. Even if now it seems to entail becoming a sideshow for minor clans." He had switched to English at the last sentence and sighed deeply. "They intend to hold this exhibition **now**?"

"Yes."

"I might as well have joined a circus," Spock said, again in English, and then paused in throwing back the blanket, looking up at Sarek suspiciously. "Did you know about this?"

Sarek had never expected his son to take him to task, but he supposed Spock deserved an answer. "Yesterday evening, I was informed of the vote. I had intended to tell you then. But you went up the mountain."

Spock's jaw dropped, his mouth once again forming that inadvertent 'O'.

"I was not aware of their schedule for the test."

"No, they couldn't reveal that ahead of time," Spock said, and sighed again. "Mother has occasionally expressed the view that no good deed goes unpunished. She is again proven correct."

Sarek disciplined himself from reacting to that human aphorism. "I will wait for you downstairs in the Great Hall," he said. "I suggest you be quiet. I see no need for your Mother to be awakened."

Spock nodded in entire agreement of that and got out of bed. Sarek's last sight was of him tossing the lematya coverlet to the floor.

Sarek went down the stairs to meet the representatives of the Council in the courtyard.

"Yes?" he asked in his coldest voice.

"We are here for the test voted upon by Council," the lead representative, Smurl, announced.

"You did not think it appropriate to arrange the time in advance with me?"

"For a true test, it should be unexpected. And it is well to have this done as soon as possible," there was a faint disparagement too, in the Councilor's tone. Sarek gathered that he was to understand not all in Council approved of this. Smurl apparently had been chosen to be an impartial judge. "It seemed best to hold it as swiftly as possible."

"Before dawn?" Sarek asked caustically.

"Lematya are nocturnal. Before dawn, even those that have finished hunting are generally awake."

"Spock is to satisfy your demands before he has even breakfasted?" Sarek asked. "He is a growing child."

"Given the type of telepath he is," Suryan said, stepping forward, "I am of the belief that it is better so."

"I had not thought you a member of Council, Suryan," Sarek said.

"But I have been Spock's psi tutor most recently," the Vulcan responded. "And I was called upon by Council to advise, stand witness and report."

Sarek understood this was not entirely voluntary either. Such a Council demand was a veritable mandate. It could be enforced by the Guard, though never in modern history had it needed to be. At a gesture from Sarek, Suryan stepped into the Great Hall for a private conference.

"I am aware of your views on this. But the hour, the lack of a morning meal, will facilitate Spock's skills," Suryan added quietly, as if to conciliate Sarek. "You can appreciate that aspect of his abilities, even if you are on the opposite of that particular psionic spectrum. For such an important test, he should be given every advantage. While I have every confidence in Spock, this is an unusual test. A poor showing could portend a negative result from Council."

Sarek gave a terse nod, ignoring the last sentence. He would deal with that if and when it came. He did understand what Suryan meant as regards the types of telepaths. But it did not lessen his disapproval.

There were many spectrums or gauges for Vulcan telepaths. One was whether it was a learned skill or a survival instinct. Vulcans differed greatly on this, and were tested and then trained accordingly. For those of which telepathy was an acquired skill, which was perhaps most Vulcans, they learned and tested best under optimum conditions. Sarek was one of those. He'd never been allowed to be hungry, cold, weary or in discomfort for his lessons, not past the initial evaluations to determine type. All had been scheduled at his most optimum times. To do otherwise would have been counterproductive; he would not have performed at his best.

But for those for whom it was a survival instinct, their talents were enhanced under less than optimum conditions: the more stress, the greater the ability. For those on the other spectrum, the abilities degraded under stress. It was considered an ancient, warrior trait to have psi sensitivity greatly increase under survival conditions. And particularly in the line of Surak, not uncommon to be so inclined. They also tended to be the more facile, sensitive and powerful telepaths. But to bring out those skills and train them, less than optimal conditions were required. Fatigue, hunger, cold, and in extreme cases in ancient times, even pain were all tools that had been successfully used to develop such telepaths to the extreme standards that in modern times were considered legendary.

After Spock had tested to be on that spectrum, not unusual in the line of Surak, his psi lessons had usually been held at the end of a long day of schooling, when he was somewhat fatigued. And just before an evening meal, even delaying it enough so that hunger could sometimes add a second level of stress. Sarek had agreed to that much from Spock's psi tutors. But never had he allowed or authorized more than those minor tactics. He firmly believed any further excesses to obtain some pre-Reform level of psionic skill nothing but folly. He had never manifested such, therefore Spock also had no need of these abilities.

He had still caught more than one tutor, bent on the extreme results that Spock had been capable of delivering, going past those minor discomforts to enhance Spock's skills. Thus he'd developed a habit in Spock's early years, of haunting his son's psi lessons to catch any violators, however he had warned and decreed against such tactics before the individuals had commenced their employ. Temptation could be great even for Vulcans to cross that line. And he'd dismissed several with a particular vengeance for falling prey to professional ambition to obtain certain results.

But Sarek had so far found Suryan to been a patient, judicious trainer. He had never found him to go past those minor discomforts. He had spot checked his son's lessons, and questioned Spock as well. Suryan had seemed sensitive to the fact that these were modern times, and he was, after all, training a child, not a pre-Reform warrior.

Spock had never particularly liked his psi training. That was perhaps too much to expect, given the conditions under which it was held. Perhaps he even disliked it. But at least he hadn't been overly resentful or rebellious in recent years under Suryan's tutelage as he had occasionally been before. Sarek reminded himself of that as he regarded the tutor.

Sarek had essentially stopped Spock's psi training during these first few months at the Academy, limiting him to a very minor review session once a week. Not an exceptionally facile telepath himself, and well aware that excessive psi sensitivity was rather more a burden than an asset, Sarek had never seen the point in flogging Spock to the extreme levels of which both psi experts and healers had insisted he was capable and at which they had wished to see him perform. He considered Vulcan control and scientific education to be far more useful and necessary for his son in these modern times. He regarded excessive psi sensitivity as merely an unnatural burden, particularly for a diplomat frequently in contentious situations. But Spock had enough latent skill that some training was required, given an untrained telepath could be a serious danger to others as well as himself.

Suryan had at first objected to the recent cutback of Spock lessons as potentially inhibiting his final skill level, but in the face of Sarek's adamant views had little choice but to acquiesce. After some fruitless argument, given Sarek was opposed, he had finally agreed that Spock's transition to the Science Academy deserved first precedence. But Sarek still regarded him closely, now, to ensure this wasn't some retribution.

"Sarek, I **was** given a Council mandate to attend this," Suryan said.

Sarek nodded, satisfied as to his candor.

"I too regret that Spock is subject to this," Suryan said. "Or that he should be in any way overly discomfited. But the blinds for this test must be intact."

Spock came down the staircase, dressed in desert togs.

"You did not have much dinner," Sarek said to him. "But Suryan believes it would be best if you did not breakfast. Do you acquiesce to that condition?"

"We'll be taking vehicles," Suryan added, "You will not have to hike up the mountain sans any recent nourishment."

"How can an aircar be traditional in the mountains?" Spock asked, quirking a brow.

"There **is** no tradition in this," Sarek said in harsh condemnation.

"Some of the Councilors are unable to make such a trek," Suryan said. "And all have tasks later this morning."

Spock pulled in the corners of his mouth, as if to control an incipient amusement. "Understood."

"Do you agree?" Sarek asked.

Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug. "I don't believe my condition will make any significant difference. But affirmative."

Sarek wondered, quietly, if that meant this was all folly, for if it were a psi skill, that should logically mean Spock's ability would improve with stress. He began to calculate responses to that fallout.

One of the Councilors joined Sarek, his son and tutor in an aircar, a small vehicle designed for the mountain passes. His presence was presumably to ensure no scanning devices would have been used en route that might compromise the test. The second group followed in another aircar, one of them holding such a scanning device. The tiny aircars landed as they could among the narrow ridges, the councilors scrambling down with difficulty to gather in one of the few spaces that could accommodate even such a limited group. Spock and Sarek were barehanded. An armed Fortress guard, in a similar vehicle lazily stood watch, well back from the councilors, presumably to protect against any attack from wildlife.

Spock looked from the knot of councilors to the guard and the trio of vehicles perched in various precarious places on the cliff top in skeptical evaluation of that possibility. "No lematya could come to this group," he muttered.

"That is not our intent," Smurl said, hearing him.

Spock straightened slightly, raising his chin. "And your intent is?"

"We wish you to demonstrate that which you did to Suchon."

Spock looked to Sarek. He received a terse nod of permission. But Spock turned back to Smurl, his face set in something like stubborn defiance. "To what purpose?" Spock asked.

Smurl raised a brow. "Specify."

"I fail to understand how this can be a required skill that must be examined."

"Are you denying that you have it?" Smurl asked. "Were your assertions to Suchon a falsehood?"

In spite of all the control Spock was holding tight to before Council, his face clouded. "If you believe I am dishonest," Spock said. "Then I am not worthy to be the heir to Surak. Even to be tested as such."

"Spock," Sarek warned, slightly alarmed at the direction in which this conversation was going. It would have been better for Spock to refuse outright than to claim this.

The councilors looked among themselves. "Are you refusing the position? That is-"

"No less illogical than demanding that I legitimize my claim to it by an unprecedented test." Spock's eyes flashed. "Given I have already fulfilled all those tests required by tradition."

The councilors were silent a moment. Then Smurl said, "That is true. And logical. However, since Suchon has spread word of this ability freely, Council has received both inquiries and requests for corroboration."

"I neither asked for, nor appreciate Suchon's dissemination of what I thought was a private conversation between us, during an act of service to him."

"We appreciate that. But the issue remains. Are you refusing to demonstrate this to Council, so we at least have similar experience with what Suchon has claimed?"

Spock drew a deep breath. He eyed Sarek again as if seeking his approval before giving any affirmative.

Sarek gave Spock a tacit nod, half approval, half warning.

"I suppose Council is at somewhat of a disadvantage," Spock said. "Particularly if you refuse to take my word."

"It is more that the ability is so unusual- And Council must verify-"

"I concede to the logic of your argument," Spock snapped.

Sarek's brows had risen to his bangs, but he had faded back a pace given Spock's control of the encounter.

"You have no scanning device," Smurl said into his recording device. "We have brought you to a different area, away or only bordering the territories of the lematya you claimed to have knowledge of with Suchon. And given you have had no warning, there was no impetus for you to scan in advance." At Spock's sharp look he added, "This is to answer any of those who might have doubt."

"Very well," Spock said.

"Do you require any special preparations?"

"You may step back," Spock said. He closed his eyes and tilted his head. "Another six paces please."

As one, the Councilors and Sarek retreated.

The air was hush with a pregnant pause. The skies were gray, just a hint of rose at the edge of the pass hinting at the coming dawn. For a long moment, Spock said nothing, lost in thought, eyes closed. Almost as if he were asleep.

Then Spock let out a slow breath, almost a sigh. "There is a male – Sangfried – hunting on the edge of the Langwaith Pass. He is out of his normal range, having been disturbed by this commotion. He is in a very bad temper." Spock's tone shifted from dreamy to almost conversational. "The passage of the aircars overhead had foiled a potential kill. He is hunting….vreesas. There is a hawk ahead of him, flushing a group of them. He follows the hawk, he is moving to strike. He has killed. One. Now three. The remaining prey scatter. But he is pleased; he will eat well. The hawk is not pleased. Wait. It has taken one of the kills from under the claws of the lematya. They are now both pleased, assured of a full stomach. The hawk soars, holding his kill."

Sarek shot a glance at the Vulcan holding the scanner rapidly recalibrating sensors for the direction Spock had indicated. The Vulcan raised his head, brows to his bangs and he nodded once to his clan leader in confirmation.

Spock pivoted slowly, and then stopped, drawing another long breath. "Tanidoth… She is in a cave 2.6 kilometers northwest of here." His voice was drowsy, calm. "She has a full belly, she sleeps. She sleeps." He then raised his head, eyes closed. His head tilted. "Laurentis is in her den, 3.4 kilometers southeast. She is waiting to hunt till her kits have finished nursing and sleep with the dawn." His voice had shifted again, awake, practical. "She will hunt in full light. She has three kits, a male, and two females. She is-" Spock drew a sharp shocked breath and took a sudden step forward. "But one of the females has an injury. She is weakened. Laurentis pushes her away. She wishes her to die. She will move the cubs and her den and leave the female. She will not let it feed. We must call a veterinarian." Spock had opened his eyes wide, but they were unseeing of the scene around him. His hands reached out, to close on nothing. "The cub is dying. It cries out in pain and hunger-" his voice rose in anguish.

"Spock, that is enough," Sarek said, and walking through the stunned councilors, put his hands on Spock's shoulders, breaking him out of trance. "You have demonstrated enough."

The councilor with a scanner raised his head from the device and gave a single nod to Smurl. "Quite remarkable. Unprecedented. In these times. A talent out of legend. If I had not witnessed it-"

"We must call a-" Spock continued, eyes still glazed, voice shaking.

"One will be called, Spock," Sarek said. His hands tightened painfully on Spock's shoulders and the boy gave a half choked gasp and came back to himself, staring up at Sarek's shocked face.

"One will be called," Sarek repeated. He let him go and took a step back.

After a moment of confused focus on the group around him, Spock sat down abruptly on the ground and drew a shuddering breath. He put fingers to his temples. "There are also two others," he added, in an entirely different, matter of fact voice, "juvenile males, hunting together, 8 kilometers south that I haven't linked with. But their location is evident. They are moving further south."

"Do you often link with-" Smurl asked

"I have said, that is enough," Sarek snapped, glaring at the Councilor. Between his astonishment at Spock's demonstration and his own anger at the councilors, he lost control over his tone of voice, and even his expression.

Spock looked up at Sarek wonderingly at his obvious loss of control and then something in his face changed. He looked across at Smurl, and said, with frigid coldness. "Negative. I do not link. At most, I note those close to me when I am hiking through their territories, merely for my own security. And for theirs. I never link."

"But you have now-" Smurl protested, seeking to understand.

"You demanded this demonstration of me," Spock said coldly. "One unprecedented of any other in my position. How am I to know the extent of what you sought? You told me little enough. Practically nothing. You received a demonstration to the best of my abilities under the circumstances. I trust I have satisfied whatever information you were seeking. And that I will never be asked to perform in this way again."

"You agreed our requirement was logical," Smurl said, responding to the censure in Spock's tone.

"I acknowledge that of the requirement that was logical," Spock said. "As well as that which is **not**." His brows were lowered in thunderclouds and Smurl took a step back as if recognizing he had made an error with this future head of Council.

"Again, I believe that is enough," Sarek said heavily, having regained control himself. "On both sides. There is no more to be gained by continuing this. Between the events of last night and this evening, Spock is fatigued. And this large of a presence of aircars and personnel," he added with pointed censure, "two nights in a row, is destroying the integrity of my wildlife preserve. It is time to depart. The councilors must prepare their report and inform Council. And Spock must return home, to eat and rest."

Spock rose to his feet but instead of returning to the vehicle that brought him, he began to walk along the ridgeline, a very narrow knife edge with a several thousand meter drop to either side that led down the mountain, part of the ancient trail that led from Shikahr to the mountain pass. The Councilors had chosen their test site well; Spock had neither the gear nor the skills to frequent or easily reach this area. Few came this far, except those who were attempting the high pass.

"Spock," Sarek said, keeping his voice pitched for his son's ears alone. "You are **not** to remain in the Llangons."

"I will hike home."

"I forbid it."

"You-" Spock turned so swiftly that his foot slipped on a loose rock. He kept his balance but Sarek caught his arm.

"You can see that you are too fatigued to remain or to hike home. You will attend me."

"I will not."

Sarek raised a brow, looking down at his son, wondering if he were going to witness a tantrum such as he hadn't seen since the boy was much younger. And in front of Council's representatives. "Spock. You are still under the influence of your recent links. You are not a wild animal. Remember your control."

Spock sank down to the ground, head lowered, shoulders shuddering.

Sarek moved to block anyone's sight of this, though the Councilors were filing toward their aircars, Spock's tutor as well. And the guardsman by his vehicle waited, turned away in studied neutrality, bound and sworn to silent service. "Spock," Sarek urged in an undertone, "Calm yourself. I understand that you are fatigued. This test is over."

"It is not over," Spock choked out. "It is never **over**."

"But you fulfilled their -"

" **You** didn't believe me," Spock accused. "I saw. The expression on your face after the test. The surprise. You did not **believe** me."

Sarek stood, pole-axed on the knife peak. Far off, a hawk rose on a thermal, a rising column of heated air. Sarek was beginning to feel lightheaded as well, as if his own ordered world were being equally overtaken. Even his marriage to his human wife had not brought such a crashing chasm of overturned beliefs as this shocking, unpredictable child. "You said your condition did not matter. That nothing would affect the test. I naturally assumed-"

"That I had **lied**?"

"Calm yourself. I did not know what to believe. This is hardly a known or common ability. It is a legend. I put no faith in legends. Suchon could have made an error. You are only a child. You could easily have made an error. Misspoken. Or misunderstood what you thought you were sensing."

Spock rubbed his eyes and fought to control his breathing through choking gasps that wanted to be sobs if he would have allowed himself that outlet.

"You are fatigued," Sarek said. "We must return home now."

"I have no home," Spock said. "There is none for me."

"You have been taxed beyond control," Sarek said. He lifted Spock to his feet. Spock pulled away from his hands.

"I will hike down."

"Spock, I forbid it."

"I am in need of private meditation. I **will** hike down," Spock said, and set off down the ridge.

Sarek's hands clenched into fists. Spock's demand for meditation was traditional. By Vulcan standards, inviolate. Sarek could insist, argue, even discipline for disobedience. But in these past few months, Spock had crossed that dividing line of maturity where his son had an almost equal right to choose these options for himself, even over what Sarek considered more sensible needs for food and rest. Even safety. Focused on his goals and relatively obedient as Spock had been these last few years, Sarek had no idea that these issues of decision and independence would come up so quickly upon his passing to the Science Academy, or so intensely. He looked out across the peak, the knot of Councilors, back to the faint ridge path Spock had turned down. This was no place for an altercation or a struggle. Nor would it be appropriate for him to discipline him, not for this. And Spock was walking steadily enough now as he moved down the ridge. The ridge was certainly a dangerous area, but not impassable, not overwhelmingly more so than Spock's usual mountain rambles. And he had proven his mountain craft. Sarek was uneasy about it – he himself had not traversed the ridge to the high pass in some time, and he had few reports on its condition. But perhaps Spock had done so, enough to make this decision.

Sarek was aware that he and his son had crossed yet another line, the reins of control slipping through his hands. He pondered that, not sure yet how to deal with it, or how to reset appropriate boundaries for obedience and discipline. But for now, he let him go. And he turned back alone to return with the guardsman.

The Councilors had returned to their vehicles, as if eager to escape Sarek's notice. But Suryan was waiting for him, face drawn with tension.

"You are letting him hike down?" the tutor asked.

Sarek reflected inwardly that his permission had hardly been sought. But he saw no reason to elaborate such with Spock's tutor. "As you see."

"Is that not overly risky, given Spock has such a talent?"

Sarek set his mouth. "You sound as _Xhanzrei_ -dazzled as Suchon."

"I can understand his amazement. Such unprecedented ability-"

"Hardly that. You deal every day with psi talents. It is your profession."

"But to discover this legendary gift long attributed to Surak has survived all these millennia and is yet present in the gene pool – it is quite amazing. And it should be explored."

Sarek halted, staring at the tutor. "Explored?"

"I was of course aware that Spock was very gifted. He's shown many tendencies to advanced, even pre-Reform psi skills. But now we must see if Spock has this particular gift in full. We must test again, not just to sense, but this time to **over-control** the lematya, as Surak allegedly did!" Suryan's eyes flashed, his bearing rigid with excitement.

A green tinged rage rose up in Sarek, heating his blood and quickening his heart. "Have you lost all reason?" he asked.

"But we cannot ignore-"

"Do you think I would allow any child, particularly my child, regular, unshielded deep contact with animal minds, predator minds? To the detriment of his sanity and his control?"

"But to have this skill and not test-"

"I have other concerns. There have been those whose shields fail upon excessive psi sensitivity. Spock has imperfect shields and such sensitivity. Some have gone mad in the end, unaware where their mind ends and another's begins. I would far rather his skills were reversed, with stronger shields and less sensitivity. Or that his tutors concentrated, as I decreed, on shoring up those shields, rather than exploring dangerous, anachronistic sensitivities."

"I'm aware your talents lie in such shields, Sarek," the Suryan said stiffly. "But I must train the talent before me."

"Train for what?" Sarek demanded. "This is not pre-Reform Vulcan. We have no need for such skills when they entail such risk. Science and the Disciplines rule in this age. Those are the areas in which I decreed Spock should be trained."

"But investigating the historic past of these legends in present day descendants is also historically important."

"Negative. I will not authorize or allow it."

"Sarek, consider. Spock has control that would alleviate much of that risk. Why, I have seen him manifest some of the ancient gifts and he-"

Sarek turned, so swiftly the tutor fell back. "You've what? You had no authorization to explore any of that. Nor attempt any of the methods used to elicit them. I was very clear on that, upon your employ."

The tutor wet his lips in the dry air. "There were days. When he was distressed, or in pain – not by my hand. I knew based on his records, that he had some of these skills. Occasionally, when conditions warranted the attempt, just to see if the ability had not degraded, I –" He took a step back at Sarek's feral expression. "Only minor tests. To light a candle. To move an object."

"I had forbidden that entirely."

"You forbade the methods to elicit them. But the ability is inherent. Spock has those abilities. You can't forbid them out of existence. He has the talent. He should be trained-"

"For a child's game? For kindling flames, psycho-kinesis or sensing animals from afar?" Sarek's eyes flashed in anger. "I would not have believed you susceptible to such trivia and nonsense. And in this age. To what logical purpose would you train these alleged skills? They are nothing that can't be done more easily or safely with a sensor, a hand or a lighter. They are detrimental, energy intensive for a child who has always been underweight. No practical use drives the necessity for such risks to his health, his mind and his control. You have disregarded my expressive orders with such attempts." Sarek mastered a towering rage with a supreme effort. "And now you express a wish to expose him further for some pre-Reform test of over-controlling lematya, based on some anachronistic legend? We have no need to control lematya in that way now. Spock need never be risked for that end. You have rather proven your lack of control and discipline in regard to my instructions. You cannot be trusted to teach them in others."

"Sarek!"

"You are dismissed from my employ. You will be forbidden access to my home, to the Academy, to Council. You will never see or enter my son's presence again."

"Hear me, I -"

"Be assured if you do, you will be banished from the clan."

"Sarek!"

But Sarek had turned away and entering the guard's aircar, gestured him to depart.

Suryan stared at Sarek's departing aircar and crossed to the vehicle with the waiting Councilors, his shoulders slumped.

The peak, witness to yet another historic event in Vulcan history, was now empty and silent, heir to only the sky above, the wildlife below and the wind whistling through its lofty spires.

xxx

Spock moved down the ridge, concentrating fiercely, even though his vision was at times impaired with moisture from a childish emotionalism. But after he saw the aircars depart, and after he had traversed a bit, and seeing the terrain he had to descend, that settled him to the serious consideration of not breaking his neck. There was a trail here, or the remnants of one, much degraded, for if he went upward, it would lead to the high pass. He could have used climbing gear for this area, certainly would need it to attempt the high pass in this trail's degraded condition. But if such gear would have been eminently advisable in his present location, it wasn't absolutely required. He merely moved very carefully, on a ridge that was in places only a foot or so wide or less, with drops of hundreds or thousands of feet on either side. In particularly nasty areas, he moved to all fours and crawled down backwards, never moving a hand or foot for a new hold unless he was secure on at least two others. There was no need for haste on the dangerous stretches. He could see hawks wheeling at a distance. But on this knife edge ridge, no large predators could move and no wildlife came to bother him.

Still the rays of the sun grew painfully acute with long exposure at this altitude. His skin began to be burned. His eyes began to lose detailed focus as nictating membranes dropped down to protect the nerves from the damaging rays of the sun. He began to feel chilled in the thin air, and plagued by increasing hunger and thirst. He kept looking for a stretch of trail he was familiar with down below. But still the knife edge ridge went down and down, seemingly without end. Had he not the directional sense every Vulcan was born with, he would have thought himself lost on the mountain.

At one point, pausing to rest in a particularly dangerous area crumbled by weather or erosion or earthquake, his emotions, fueled by hunger, thirst and exhaustion began to overtake him again, his eyes filling with tears and even his nose running like a pre-Kahs Wan infant. But the demands of survival dictated he master those emotions. He shoved them down with long practice. Berating the weariness that had left him vulnerable to them, he forced himself on, moving mechanically, only aware of the next rock, the next hand or foot hold, the next step. He had chosen this course of action. He knew where he was. This peak was not limitless. He was skilled enough to make it. He would find his way down.

Then he became aware that he was no longer entirely alone. A being shadowed him. He realized it was a hawk. But an odd hawk. It wore a suit over its feathers. A watch hung from a long chain around its waist. An odd hat perched on its head. It was very curious. He felt sure he had seen it before. It moved with him silently for the most part, the same distance away from him, respecting his personal space, never approaching or slowing, but echoing his moves. It did not knock rocks down on him with its passage on the loose trail, as he did, or make any sound with its movements. When he stopped for a breather, keeping a wary eye on it, it stopped too. But then at one pause, it took out its watch, consulted it and decreed in an English that sounded very odd, coming from a Vulcan raptor's beak:

"It's very late. You're going to be late."

He knew it was right. He had to get off this nearly impassable ridge before dark, or be trapped in the cold in uncertain footing when his ability to traverse it would be impaired. Vulcans had respectable night vision and so did he, but it was difficult enough to traverse this ridge in the light.

"I know," he said. "I'm going."

The hawk put the watch back in its vest and said nothing.

Spock moved on, and the hawk moved with him.

Pausing again later on, gathering his strength and his courage for another difficult stretch of crumbled rock ahead, dreading the danger, the hawk did the same thing. Drew out its watch, consulted it gravely, and told him with a pointed look, "You're very late."

He took a deep steadying breath and reached for another handhold, shadowed again by the being. He understood, intellectually, that this thing wasn't really there. It was a hallucination. One borne out of altitude sickness. He had been too long in the thin air. He was cold and wracked by shivers and hunger. His metabolism was too taxed now, to compensate as it should, as it normally would, for the conditions. All this was playing tricks with his mind.

But the hawk looked very real. And while he appreciated the danger the hallucination evidenced – he was in a bad way, if the altitude combined with his oxygen intake compromised his physical condition enough that he was hallucinating – still, he felt oddly comforted by his companion and its warning. It moved when he moved, paused when he paused, and if not exactly friendly, at least it was not antagonistic. When the ridge finally widened to a foot's pace, he rose to his feet, grateful to be able to walk rather than crawl. The hawk moved even closer, just behind or beside him. He could feel it with him, like a shadow.

At one point, late in the day, starving for food, he detoured when vegetation began to finally appear, and found himself some litrus plants. Their globular seed bulbs were sparse but he found three, and he broke two open and drank the pulpy liquid inside. It was bitter and cold too, but there was sugar and protein there, as well as liquid for his swollen tongue and they heartened him. He looked up to find the hawk watching him gravely. His vision was still imperfect but he could see its hat clearly now, with the card that said "In this Style 10/6". He mutely offered the hawk the last seedpod in gratitude for its companionship. Hawks were not vegetarians, but then again, they also did not wear watches or hats. But it just held out its watch again, and warned him with the same message.

"You are late."

"You're not the White Rabbit," Spock said, studying him with his improved vision. "Nor the Mad Hatter. And on this world, you would not be a rabbit, but a litka, anyway. What are you doing here?"

"You're very late," the hawk repeated. It looked at the sun, the rays of light slanting every more sharply across the ridge. "Unless you plan to move to the sky with me, you must continue down."

Spock ate the seedpod himself and rose to his feet. He understood the warning. Soon it would be late enough that he would be easy prey for an attack, debilitated as he was. He had reached the area where lematya preyed. And he was in a vulnerable condition. He had to get to safe shelter before those nearby rose to hunt.

He moved on, more hurriedly now that the going had widened to a discernible trail. It helped that at this lower altitude, the air thickened and seemed richer, full of scent. He breathed more easily, relieved at that. With the increasing oxygen levels, he didn't feel as cold, even with dusk coming on. His vision cleared too. And finally, he looked behind him to see his companion the hawk was gone. It had never been there, of course. But it was gone. He hurried then, even more, feeling more vulnerable alone, and without its comforting presence, its hat and watch, its warning against delay. He was all by himself, again.

He managed to get into his shelter before dusk. He'd been thinking since he'd reached the line of vegetation of what he'd left in this shelter last evening: the knapsack, the cereal bars, the orange. His mouth watered at the thought of the orange. But when he wound his way through the sheltering pillars of his cave, he found his knapsack gone, the cereal bar and orange with it. There was nothing on the desk. He remembered Sarek had come to pick up his school things. Naturally he had taken the knapsack. It would be wrong to leave food unsecured anyway, a temptation for wild animals to brave the shelter and enter.

He swayed in near despair, waves of fatigue rushing up to claim him at this disappointment. Then he remembered the emergency supplies. He came back from the alcove with the package, tore it open without even brushing off its covering of rock dust, and drank a bottle of water with not a stop. The emergency food was not so easily consumed. He had never tried it before. A dense bar of some mixed slurry of nutrients, it baffled him for a moment with its indigestible appearance. Taking a bite he discovered that it wasn't entirely unpalatable. But it had never been designed for taste; rather for its nutritional components and long storage life. He choked down half a bar, but that was quite enough. He drank another half bottle of water to settle it in his outraged stomach, indignant at being served such ingredients. And then he went to the bed alcove. Unrolling the bedding, he dove inside it to warm his chilled body. He took the Alice book from underneath and settled down in the thick bedroll, his eyes lowering. But he had barely turned to the page with the picture of the Mad Hatter, wearing that same hat as his friend the hawk, when he fell asleep with the book in his hands.

 _To be continued…._

 _Review, review, review…._


	13. Chapter 13

**A Son of Surak**

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 13

At home, awakening to find husband and son gone, Amanda was anxious and furious that both her Vulcans had disappeared without leaving her so much as a note. Further, all the family vehicles were there, compounding her confusion. It was too early for Council to be in session – unless there was some major emergency, like a war, Amanda thought nervously. But then surely Sarek would have flown to Shikahr. And Spock would still be home. And it was too early for the Academy to hold classes.

She realized that the Fortress guards of course would know. They tracked everyone that moved in or out of the Fortress, on the approach to it, or crossed in front of the Fortress to the trailhead beyond it. The guardpost, after all, was older than the Fortress. The Fortress had grown up behind it, and the guardpost had been built to protect Shikahr, not the Fortress. Though now it did as much of the latter as the former.

Amanda wished the guards were an anachronism, but even here on peaceful Vulcan there were dangers attendant with Federation politics. The Fortress hosted a lot of high level Alliance members and even Federation officials at times, though those usually came with their own security. The press had been and could still be unruly. And the guard did watch over the mountain pass down to Shikahr, occasionally rescuing some hiker who came to trouble, or the occupants of some aircar that had crashed in the uncertain wind patterns over the Llangons.

Amanda had never liked living under security. The prospect of armed guards at her door, even if their phasers were only set to heavy stun, bothered her more than the occasional rogue lematya that came down from the mountains and made a nuisance of itself in the nearby foothills or even outside the gates. The guards had always made her slightly uneasy.

Perhaps it was their completely neutral, expressionless faces when they looked at her. Maybe it was her fault. She had never been very friendly with them. But in her defense, they never were friendly with her, her few attempts generally rebuffed in a purely Vulcan way. They tended to look right through her, and never spoke to her except in a necessity.

She didn't understand that this was part of their duty and code of honor. They were sworn to silent service when they came into contact with the family. That was somewhat relaxed with male occupants in the Fortress, particularly in the pursuit of their duties. But they were doubly prohibited from giving any undue notice to the female bondmate of their clan leader, all young virile males as they were. But Amanda only knew they talked to Sarek but rarely to her. And of course they did speak to Sarek. They reported to him; worked for him. He gave them their orders and evaluated their concerns as regards security. They had a professional relationship that had nothing to do with social conversation.

But she braved her unease and asked them where Sarek had gone. If he had gone. The Fortress was so huge; it was possible he and Spock were somewhere else in the vast complex.

But the guards stared at her quizzically, as if they didn't understand Federation Standard, though she knew they did. It was a requisite of their working here, dealing with Federation officials as they often did. She repeated herself in Vulcan, which she'd forgotten to use in her anxiety, but still got only blank, ungiving faces. Then the ancient guard captain Szuriel came out of the guardpost, crossing the sands with halting aged steps. Occasionally he came into the Fortress to Sarek's office for meetings, and sometimes to Sarek's personal office in the family wing. She'd come across him a few times there, once on the terrace having tea with Sarek. Although he seldom spoke to her otherwise, those times, he had inclined his head gracefully to her, greeted her politely and even complimented her shortbread in perfect English.

"You wish something of the guard, my lady?"

"I just asked them if they had seen Sarek," she said. "I can't find him."

He regarded her for so long she wondered if he didn't understand her, though she was sure that he did.

"You must know where he is, or at least if he's not home," she said accusingly. And that much was true. Sarek seldom went anywhere alone. He was generally surrounded by aides, attendants and guards. The only times she had ever seen him take off on his own was when he hiked the Forge. Spock had been similarly plagued. Until recently, he had rarely gone to school without a guardsman delivering him or picking him up. And when he wasn't at school, he had lived in a constant swarm of tutors buzzing around him. When one left, another invariably took his place, until Spock came down for their evening meal. And then he had homework and bed. She had actually needed to make Sarek schedule some time for her with Spock, after she and he came home from school, free of lessons and tutors so she could spend some time with him. Otherwise she might have hardly seen her son at all except for meals.

And if she hadn't put her foot down early in her marriage, Spock would have probably grown up with a similar swarm of attendants around him, picking up his clothes where he dropped them, fetching his meals, making his bed, lest he spend a second's time or attention away from the incessant lessons, drill and study that his position seemed to require. Just like his father.

Sarek had agreed to her kicking out most of those attendants so they could have what to her was somewhat of a normal family life. But even Sarek rarely so much as made himself a cup of tea or did a single chore, so unused had he been to addressing the minutia of daily living. And so little did he regard it as important. She knew Sarek merely indulged her in that. On occasion, almost as an afterthought, her husband would help her clear the table, his brows sometimes raised in wonder that such mundanities existed. Regardless, she had seen that Spock did chores. He helped out in the garden – she thought the fresh air was a good contrast to his otherwise having his nose forever stuck in a computer pad. And he tided his own room and made his own lematya-coverleted bed. But she reflected that he still had a bit too much of the bratty prince in him at times, regardless of her efforts. There wasn't much she could do about that. It seemed embedded in the model. He was his father's son in that. Meanwhile, Szuriel was still looking at her, as if she had presented him some riddle he couldn't solve.

"It can't be some sort of state secret, can it?" she asked caustically.

He raised a brow at that. As if it were, and he wasn't sure she was entitled to know.

She gritted her teeth at confronting that wall again. She lived in a whole world apart from Sarek in that she had never been accepted into the clan. Something that she knew rankled her husband so terribly he never spoke of it to her and which she never raised with him. Spock had been accepted, at three. But in spite of a decade and a half of marriage to her husband, and her bonding, including Pon Farrs that came and went, Sarek's petition to have her formally adopted into the clan, which should have been _de rigueur_ with her bonding, had sat figuratively on T'Pau's desk, submitted but never approved. Her mother-in-law had never accepted her marriage, and so she was not in the clan. It never bothered her that much, to be truthful, to be excluded from clan doings. She had enough to do with her marriage, her husband, her son, her career, those friends and colleague she made at the Academy, and her home, which she preferred to maintain without all the attendants Sarek had lived with before. She took a day off a week from teaching for that, even though Sarek had thought she was mad to put it over her academic work. But he had been used to the constant presence of attendants, whom he seemed well able to entirely ignore when he chose, whereas she badly wanted a private family life. But it did tie her down with a certain amount of castle cleaning, at least in the family wing. She considered her life more than full, even without clan functions. Certainly never boring.

Unfortunately, that and her clan status left her somewhat out in the cold when she faced her husband's clan attendants. When Sarek was engaged in Alliance or Federation business or social events, she was often at his side, and always when he traveled out of the Eridani system. During the Academy's rare social events, he was at her side. But when it came to clan events, clan business, he went alone, and too often, in a grudging frame of mind that spilled over at home. A few times, she'd gone to the opening of Council, that once a year peculiarly Vulcan celebration of their turning from war to logic. But she'd watched from a special visitors' area. And given she found Shikhar's climate less comfortable than her mountain home and that event, packed with thousands of Vulcans gathered into the Council Keep, particularly hot and airless, she didn't much care to attend. After all, it was pretty much the same year after year. And Sarek didn't seem to mind her absence. He led the ceremony as he seemed to do so much of his work, with a perfunctory acceptance that it was an inescapable duty he had to perform. And he was raising Spock to hold the same attitude.

Still, they belonged. She did not.

But that left her vulnerable now, when she needed information from these silent attendants.

"My son is gone as well," she said, begging Szuriel.

But then an aircar appeared from behind the spires of the distant peak, and then another, and another. They weren't familiar, family vehicles, with a lematya emblazon. They were marked with the guard's sigil. But they were heading for the Fortress.

"Sarek will be with them," Szuriel said, and then without another word of explanation, turned back to the guardpost.

She turned and went into the house. In spite of Sarek's calm confidence that attendants saw and heard nothing, she'd rather have her confrontations in private.

"Where have you been?" Amanda asked Sarek when he walked in the garden court door to the kitchen. "Why are you in desert wear? Did Spock go to the mountains again? Why did you come home in a guard's flyer? And where is Spock?"

"Council held their meeting." Sarek was looking at her oddly. Almost wonderingly. He held out a hand, and she went to him and took it. Sarek sat down at the table and she found herself sinking to a chair opposite.

"In the mountains? Before dawn?" she asked, bewildered.

"Affirmative." He was looking down at her hand, fingers caressing hers as if he had never seen it, or her.

"Why? And where's Spock now?" She pulled her hand away. That seemed to stir him out of whatever reverie he had been in.

"He chose to hike down."

"Sarek! Why did you let him?"

His eyes were roving over her face, much as his fingers had caressed her hand. "He has the right," Sarek simply replied.

"He's only a child. And he's ill."

"No. He is not, not in this."

She wrinkled her brow. "You're not making any sense. What do you mean?"

Sarek blinked and seemed to come back to himself. "Amanda, I could not have ensured his obedience."

" **You** couldn't?" she asked skeptically.

"Not without more discipline and confrontation than I would choose to give," he said, with a certain wry reluctance.

"And if he falls off the mountain, or is attacked by a predator and isn't well enough to fight it off?" she accused. "Isn't that worse than him being upset because he'd be punished for disobeying?"

"I doubt that will happen."

"You doubt?" She sat back. "Is that supposed to satisfy me? Oh, Sarek. I wish you wouldn't continually assume that Spock is Vulcanly inviolate in everything. Even when he's being a brat. What if he isn't?"

"Spock **is** Vulcan," Sarek countered. "He proved himself to be so today. Past all, I believe, of Council's doubts."

"Past all of yours too?"

Sarek didn't answer, deep in thought. Then he quirked a noncommittal brow.

"I've heard it before," Amanda said. "And yet he never seems to get away from proving it. To you and to others. But regardless of that, he's my son too."

"We must assume," Sarek said heavily, "That given Spock has made a choice to be Vulcan, and chose to spend time in meditation, that as a Vulcan, he has factored his condition into such decisions and deems himself fit enough for the endeavor."

"He's thirteen, not three hundred. If he's so uncontrolled that he refused to obey you, why do you assume he was making a rational choice about his behavioral fitness?"

Sarek gave her a dark look at that criticism. "Because it is the Vulcan Way."

"Well, I hope he isn't going to be sacrificed to it yet again," Amanda said. "And I'd like to know why," she added, crossing to look out the window at the Llangons' sharp peaks, hugging her elbows to her sides in anxiety, "your Vulcan customs always, **always** come with a survival risk attached?"

"That also is the Vulcan Way," Sarek said.

She looked over her shoulder at him. "I'm beginning to be sick to death of that answer, Sarek. And not entirely sure that your Vulcan Way can entirely apply to my son."

"We must trust," Sarek said, "that neither he nor I have made a critical error."

"What did I say yesterday about trusting and believing you?" Amanda asked. "I'm putting a lot of faith in you, my husband. Don't let me down."

Sarek had no answer.

"So the Council is satisfied?" She asked. "They got the answers they wanted from Spock?"

Sarek raised a brow. "I don't see how they could fail to be otherwise."

"I still don't understand what they wanted from him."

"Nothing but what he could easily satisfy."

"Before dawn, when he's ill?" Amanda said. "I hope this is the end of that nonsense."

"I will ensure that it is," Sarek said with intent, eyes hooded, voice low enough to almost be a growl.

Amanda frowned at him, taking half a step back. "You're frightening me again."

"I?" Sarek sat up. Changing countenance, he raised a brow, suddenly manifesting supreme Vulcan innocence. "Surely not."

Amanda gave him a sidelong look, then went to make breakfast. "You don't fool me, you know. Under that veneer of cultured diplomat lies a Vulcan warrior, who rises up at the least scratch on the surface. I know that much. I know you." She put a cup of tea before him. "Spock has it too," she said moodily.

Sarek sipped his tea in contemplation of that fact, remembering Spock, standing off against Council, defiant even to him. "Yes," he said. "He most certainly does."

"I guess that's something," Amanda said.

After first arranging for a veterinarian for Spock's injured cub, Sarek went to Council. Amanda, fretting but realizing Spock would not be home for hours, finally went off to teach her classes.

At Council, Sarek received some of the fallout from Spock's test. Councilors literally dropping back a pace upon his presence, as if he were Surak himself. The ancient Keep buzzed with conversation that never quite reached Sarek's ears, but the looks he received told him well enough what the subject had been. Upon hearing the results of the test, Council was, quite logically, amazed. Upon hearing Spock's antipathy to being tested, Council was equally logically anxious. Oddly enough to Sarek, they didn't attribute his son's rancor to a loss of control, either of human or Vulcan. Instead they seemed to consider it a true Surakian response to being questioned or doubted. Sarek supposed he had contributed somewhat to that particular legend. That Spock apparently had it as well and had manifested it at this time before Council only seemed to gild to the lily and marked him further as a son of Surak. Sarek could not approve Spock's loss of control. But he supposed in this instance it had served both his son's and his purpose.

Sarek received approaches as to Council's making amends to the heirs of Surak, as tentative as if they expected Sarek to further demonstrate the legend and set a pride of lematya upon them, as if lematya were as much his to command as his own domesticated sehlats.

"There are no amends," Sarek said. "But to end this subject entirely, with finality. Spock is to be left to pursue his studies in peace. No further references to this subject, no enquiries and no tests. In spite of the wishes of some to extend that experiment. Is that entirely understood?"

He sensed some were disappointed at this. But was hastily assured that it was.

Council quickly prepared a statement for release stating the results of the test. Sarek didn't much like that, concerned that at least in the short run, it would raise interest among even those who had ignored or discounted the controversy before. But he saw it as the only way to shut down the rumor mill that had been disrupting Shikahr. Vulcans tended to take pronouncements from Council with equanimity. Sarek trusted that that in itself would tone down this somewhat unconventional news. And that, with this official word, the subject would fade and dissipate as a source of gossip.

But when Sarek arrived home, far from the ordeal being over, the source of it was still gone, his room empty, the bed neatly made. Sarek swore a Romulan curse and went out to the gate guards.

"Has Spock been home? Did he leave for the Academy?"

A negative to both questions.

Sarek looked up the mountain. Through the parental bond, he sensed Spock was alive. More than that, he simply couldn't tell. Perhaps the boy had stopped to rest in one of his shelters. That would be logical, Sarek thought, but it failed to alleviate his logical concern, and his mother would be furious. Regardless, either Spock was holed up in a cave or other stronghold, or he was out somewhere, enjoying the sunshine, scavenging for food or meditating.

Having once sent his five year old son on a ten day survival test, Sarek knew he had little moral authority to demand Spock return home simply because his father was concerned after a mere half a day's absence. Even less to go after him. Spock would come home. Or he would not.

Sarek chose not to dwell on Spock's shocking assertion that he had no home. The boy would come home.

When Amanda returned, she took one look at her husband and said, "He's not back?"

"Correct." Sarek hesitated and then said, more reassuringly than he believed. "He will be home for breakfast. As usual."

Amanda's mouth set. "I am not happy about this, my husband. If he's not back by then, regardless of Vulcan tradition, you are going after him and bringing him home. Or I will take a scanner and a phaser and I will go after him myself. Vulcan tradition or not. It only goes so far with me. And I don't care how many lematya stand in my way."

Sarek flicked a brow, not disposed to argue with his human wife when she was in this mood. At times even a Vulcan warrior knew when to stand down from battle.

xxx

The shriek of a hunting lematya woke Spock some time after midnight. It was very close. But even as Spock put his feet on the cave floor, he recognized his surroundings and knew that he was safe. Not much more than a cub could get through those closely spaced pillars. Even before he was fully awake, he could hear the lematya moving away, chasing its intended prey.

The Alice book had slipped from his fingers to the floor. He picked it up and put it carefully back on a rock shelf. He crossed over to the desk and looked down regretfully at the emergency food, thinking of the Fortress below, filled with roses, fruit and vegetables, oranges and grapes and lemons. It was less than three hours down the mountain in good weather at his best pace.

But this was prime lematya hunting time. Whatever the weather, he was not at his best. He was still aching and sore from yesterday's hike down from the peak.

And he had told his father that home wasn't home any more.

He wasn't sure what he had meant by that. But by no means was he ready to face his father now. And he had other concerns as well.

So he drank the rest of the bottle of water. And with some reluctance, knowing he needed it, he ate the remaining half of the emergency bar, not without a little shudder of revulsion. True, with a little prospecting, he could find something outside better to eat. But between his condition and the lematya, given he had this alternative, that would have been unwise. And he had something else that required precedence. But as he forced down the unpalatable meal, he resolved to explore other options for emergency food. Perhaps the Terrans had something not just edible, but that actually tasted like food.

He lit one of his lanterns. His nightvision didn't necessarily require it for sight, but it would serve as a focus for his next endeavor. The lantern wasn't much, as meditation flames went. But it would help. Steepling his fingers, he began to prepare himself. He had some healing to do. If he did return home, he didn't want to do so unwell or give his mother any reason to find fault with him. The last thing he wanted was be subject to any more potions or ministrations by a human physician. Or for that matter, any representative of the Healers' Enclave.

Fortunately he had been well trained for this endeavor. Long and sometimes arduous as his many lessons had been, at last they were proving to be of some usefulness to himself, and not just as a benchmark for others by which to judge him. It took him some time and fumbling to get it right. But his condition was not serious, as the human physician had said. He managed to heal the inflammation. Then he went to work on his bruises and soreness. That took less time, and he didn't strive for perfection.

He didn't need help, coming out of such a light trance as this. When he opened his eyes again, dawn was only a short time off. He had to decide now, where he was going. If he was going home.

But the problem with that, Spock knew, now that his temper had cooled, was that it wasn't really a question. He supposed he could survive in the mountains. He knew where to get food and water. How to stay warm in the freezing nights and avoid the sun in the worst heat of the day. What were safe shelters, and when to take cover. He could survive months, even a hungry, but possible year or two.

But what then? He would grow out of his clothes and shoes long before that. Did he propose to traverse the Forge in furs and rags, clanless and alone, an even bigger curiosity to people than he was now? And those practicalities aside, he didn't want to rise to adulthood as an ignorant savage. He needed his parents, not for bare survival, but for all those extras they supplied. First and foremost being the expensive, valuable education they had never failed to provide him, even at his least promising times. Until he completed that education, he was still a child, regardless of any survival training. He was useful for nothing, unemployable and dependent. He was too young, regardless of any legendary but ultimately impractical Vulcan standards for adulthood.

He unfolded his hands, acknowledging the unpleasant truth. He had no reasonable alternative options. He would have to go home, take his punishment for defying Sarek – and once before Council too – and try to do as he was told. Spock rose, went outside the cave and looked down the mountain, across to Shikahr in the distance, above to the sky.

But then, when he had an education… surely there was a place, somewhere, for an educated half Vulcan who never quite fit anywhere?

Even this early, Shikahr buzzed in the distance. Far below the Fortress drowsed on, drifting in a virtual timewarp, an ancient, beautiful anachronism, a tangible link between Vulcan's legendary warrior past and the practical present.

As did he. Perhaps as did all the sons of Surak.

At a nearly invisible movement overhead, Spock looked up to discern a vessel above in the atmosphere, more like a falling star than a ship, but one which moved with purpose. Some offworlder vessel, no doubt, moving into space dock. And then he remembered Starfleet.

He sat cross-legged on the ground to consider this.

The Vulcan Fleet had been a home, of sorts. But he would always be his father's son there. And his mother's too, a half Vulcan, always judged. He could not be human, Vulcan dominant as he was. But surely he was Vulcan enough for humans that he could hardly elicit any criticism from them. His inadvertent adoption of some of his mother's ways, expressions or preferences that had seeped in – contamination as Sarek might put it – that behavior would be barely noticed there, or regarded as adaptation to his environment.

It was a possibility. One that augured further investigation.

He sighed and seeing the first touches of dawn beginning to lighten the peaks, he turned down the mountain.

Time, as his mother would say, to face the music. He shivered from something other than the chill dawn.

He wished it were going to be only music.

xxx

Amanda had retired to bed uneasy and unhappy. No matter how many nights Spock spent on the Forge, she would never get used to it.

Sarek had meditated long, suppressing his own desire to fetch his son home, slept little and risen early. He was fully prepared to go up the mountain if Spock did not appear as usual before breakfast.

But as if Spock had recognized the parental leash had tightened past all further roaming, Spock came home just before Sarek set out. Coming toward the garden court door, he paused at the sight of his father coming out.

"Did you get the cub?" Spock asked. First things first, to his mind.

Sarek raised a brow. "Your cub was picked up yesterday, with the condition you noted. It is now in the Langwaith Wildlife Hospital. You may see it there if you wish."

"I am grateful," Spock said.

"Gratitude is unnecessary. The preserve is my responsibility. And triplets come to harm not infrequently. It was a little undersized, but I am informed its injury was recent, and the mother had not rejected it for long. It should make a full recovery and will be returned to the wild upon its growth. No doubt in a few years after its return to the preserve, it will also be coming down the pass and making a nuisance of itself around the gates, since the best of caution fails to entirely preserve in such animals the needful fear of habitations."

"I am aware of that," Spock said bluntly.

"Indeed," Sarek said. And looked over his son.

"Do you want something of me?" Spock asked. The words, the phrasing, the slightly imperious tone, though coming from Spock's mouth, were Sarek's own. And at their haughtiest.

Sarek blinked as if realizing he was essentially barring the way. He stood aside. "To come in, and eat breakfast. I expected you to return home yesterday," he added, as Spock moved past him. "Your mother has been very concerned."

"I required a healing trance. I wished privacy for that. And then to meditate."

Amanda accosted them before Sarek could answer as they walked through the short hallway into the kitchen.

"Finally! You were not supposed to go anywhere yesterday," she said to her son.

"I had no choice," Spock said, with a glance to Sarek.

"You didn't need to stay out all night in the mountains. You are not well, remember."

"I am now perfectly well," Spock said. "I am cured of the condition the physician indicated. And I needed none of his drugs," he added darkly.

"Cured?" she said, astonished. "That's impossible."

"I **am** cured. But given I am not to be trusted," Spock said with a heavy gaze to Sarek. "In any of my pronouncements, you may call your human physician so that he may verify the fact."

"You are actually volunteering to see Mark?" Amanda said, stunned. "We don't have to tie you down and sit on you?"

"You do not believe me, and require his verification. So, yes, I must," Spock said.

"I didn't say I didn't believe you," Amanda said, frowning at him. When Spock gave her a look, she flared. "Well, I do find it rather hard, regardless of all those lessons from healers. But all right. If that's the way you want it, I'll call him. But if you aren't cured-" she shook her head and went off to the communications unit.

"Spock," Sarek said quietly in her absence. "It is not that I disbelieved you regarding the test."

"Yes, you did."

"Not entirely."

"I know what you think of me," Spock accused.

Sarek raised both brows. "Indeed? Apparently, you do not."

Spock looked at him with no forgiveness. "You allowed Council to do that to me. You joined with them in it."

"Again, it was not my choice. I cannot entirely control all of Council, regardless that you might believe otherwise."

"Am I so little to you?" Spock asked, his eyes narrowed.

"You are my son," Sarek said, frowning.

"This time. Because I passed yet another test. Is that not true?" Spock didn't wait for Sarek to answer. "From being sealed to Council, to the Kahs Wan to all the others up till now. A series of tests that I had better pass, or I will not be your son. And what will be the next test, Father? So that I can prepare?"

"Spock, the Council has a right to set such tests, though they should involve only those mandated by tradition. Which you have passed. There will be no more. Except those standards of behavior and Discipline required by the Vulcan Way."

"And if I am not Vulcan enough for the Vulcan way?"

"You are."

"What if, Father? Don't you think I have a right to know what will happen to me?"

Sarek was appalled at this outpouring of vituperation. "Nothing will happen to you. Spock, you are fatigued."

"As mother would say," Spock said, still coldly furious, "Whose fault is that?"

Amanda came back, looking between them worriedly. "Mark will be over soon, probably by the time we've breakfasted. Which I want you to do now, Spock. Before you vanish before our eyes. Did you eat anything at all yesterday?"

Spock sank into a chair. "Affirmative. Some seeds on the trail. An emergency food bar."

Amanda wrinkled her nose. "Sounds horrible."

"They were." He pulled away from her arm around his shoulders as she came to hug him. "I should clean up and change clothes."

"You can eat first," she said tartly. "The last time I sent you upstairs, I believe you disappeared before dinner. I'm not taking a chance about breakfast."

Spock ate enough breakfast, for once, to please both his parents. His mother prepared an excellent one, sweet muffins layered with fruit, and savory ones laced with nut butters, and the Vulcan equivalent of omelets – those seed pods Spock had eaten on the cliffs made a very similar substitute, when combined with other ingredients - and shredded plomeek mixed with hashed potatoes. Spock's stomach had shrunken a bit, having not been filled for awhile, but he ate a sample of everything, and since he still felt rather chilled, had a cup of cocoa with his breakfast. He enjoyed warming his hands on it quite as much as he enjoyed how it warmed his interior. He knew he would be in Shikahr later today, in the city's baking heat. But for now the memory of those windy peaks and the hypothermia and hypoxia he had experienced still sent shivers through him. He thought sipping it, his eyes half closed, that he should take some cocoa mix to the mountains, for his emergency supplies. The problem with tea was that it was just not as heartening when one was cold.

Abrams came when they were still at breakfast. Once again, he had his scanner out practically as he was walking through the door. "Your mom says you claimed to have healed yourself."

"I have." Spock shrank back fractionally at the intrusive scanner, then forced himself to hold still for it.

"We'll see. I know Vulcan healers can do some amazing things, but you're a little pint-sized for that." He paused, stared at his scanner results, shook his head, and turned the scanner off. "Let me recalibrate this." He turned it back on, and tried it again. "Well, darn, if you aren't right," Abrams said. "No sign of the inflammation. Quickest recovery I've seen, even here on Vulcan. Well done." He reached out, unthinking, and ruffled Spock's hair.

Spock drew back in alarm. But looked equally taken aback by the commendation. "I didn't understand before. Until I saw the scanner results. Then I -"

"You didn't think it was anything but your normal tender stomach. And that's fine. Now that you know, you can guard against it. But Spock," He had recalibrated his scanner and was taking the readings of Spock's general condition, frowning at the results. "You have healed the inflammation, but what else have you been up to – climbing mountains again?"

"When does he not?" Amanda put in tartly at that.

"Well, you've depleted yourself in the process. You need to take better care. Eating sensibly, avoiding stress and not developing the condition in the first place, those are better than all the cures your Vulcan metabolism can pull off. Got me?"

"Affirmative." Spock looked at his mother. "And so I can go to school."

Abrams shook his head. "One track mind. Well, I don't think it is necessary."

"I must go to school," Spock said, thinking of his resolve, up in the mountains. His need for a completed education. "I missed yesterday."

"Well, I don't have any reason to give you to prevent it," Mark said with a set expression that belied his words. "Other than common sense and not pushing yourself." He eyed Sarek and Amanda. "Neither of which seems to be considered a good reason on Vulcan."

"I think you should stay home today," Amanda said.

"I must go to school," Spock insisted.

"You may go," Sarek said. "When you have finished your breakfast."

Amanda shook her head, but forbore to argue with her husband in front of the physician. "Speaking of breakfast, Mark," Amanda said, gesturing to the table. "Would you like to join us? It's the least we can do for you, dragging you out here so early. And for what you did for Spock."

"I healed **myself** ," Spock began.

"Children," Amanda said, frowning at her son, "should be seen and not heard. Particularly when they have been obnoxious brats, worrying me unspeakably as you have."

Spock subsided, looking as sulky as a Vulcan would allow himself.

Abrams snorted at this, then looked at the table, set with Terran and Vulcan delicacies, including fresh fruit that was worth a prince's ransom on Vulcan. He half grinned at the prince in question, obviously unenthusiastic at the prospect of dining with a physician. "Well, in the face of this spread, and in spite of the fact that I'm undoubtedly going to spoil Spock's appetite, how can I refuse? I'll take my fee out in fruit."

"I keep forgetting not everyone has a garden like mine. I'll send you a care package," Amanda promised, passing him a dish.

"So long as I don't have to go into the gardens and pick it," Spock muttered, snatching an orange like the one he had been thinking about since yesterday, but spoken low enough that his mother couldn't hear.

Sarek did, but when he looked at his son, peeling the orange, he saw an even more judgmental look returned.

They still had their relationship to retrieve, even more so than Council's with them.

Sarek's aide appeared at the door. "Forgive me, sir. But there is an urgent call from Admiral Longworth. And given the subspace window to Terra will close before morning scheduling-"

Sarek sighed and rose. At the moment, the reconciliation with his son would have to wait.

He glanced at Spock, who sat up and returned the look, but then Sarek left without any comment.

"Why is it those two sometimes remind me of a pair of junkyard dogs, sizing each other up?" Abrams asked Amanda lightly when he was sure Sarek was out of earshot.

"Mark," Amanda warned.

"Sorry, sorry," Mark said. Then added, with a brightened smile. "Maybe I should have said lematya."

"Eat your breakfast," Amanda said sternly.

"Yes, ma'am," Abrams said.

But Abrams, in spite of his appreciation of the food, ate hastily, and left, claiming he had early appointments back at the Terran Embassy. Spock, who had ignored the arcane statement about dogs as just another incomprehensible human comment, was relieved that rather than being sent out to pick the physician's care package, his mother told Abrams she would have one packed by the gardeners and sent over to the Embassy later that morning. It was one of his usual chores, to fetch garden produce, but he was glad to be spared it for once. He was tired from his trek down from the ridge yesterday, the exhausting healing trance, and his trip down the mountain today. School was all he believed he was capable of this morning -

He was sitting there, consuming a corn muffin and an orange slice with slow absorption, thinking about that climb down the mountain yesterday, and wondering about that hawk – he had seemed so real. But the hat, and the watch – he knew the thing had been an illusion. His mother finished her breakfast and began to clear the table.

"I suppose your father is going to be tied up until he has to leave for Council," Amanda said. "And he hardly ate anything. I'm rather tired of Admiral Longworth. And I've never even met him."

"Have there been more incursions on the Neutral Zone?" Spock asked, looking up from his muffin.

Amanda gave him an odd surprised look. "That's nothing for you to worry about," she said.

"But," Spock began to protest, then realized his mother didn't know about his patrol activities.

"You have enough to deal with," Amanda said, and then, without warning, Spock found himself enveloped in a tight hug. "I was so worried about you yesterday!"

"That was illogical," Spock said.

"You're talking to your mother. I never signed up for the Vulcan Way. I can be as illogical as I choose."

"That is debatable," Spock said, "You have married a Vulcan."

Amanda gave her son a sidelong glance. "Trust me. He wasn't entirely interested in logic either at the time."

Spock flushed and then raised his head. "That seems unlikely," he said loftily.

"Wait till you've grown up a little more."

"I regret causing you distress," Spock said when he had restored his equilibrium. Not expecting the hug, he hadn't barriered properly; her emotions had come through strong and clear, love and concern and frustration. "And I am sorry," he added, "if I have been a brat. It seems that I have, in a number of ways."

"Well, you are a teenager," Amanda said. "It comes with the age, so I gather." She smiled, "And you have to admit, you have always been something of a brat. But I love you anyway."

"Mother," Spock said pensively, ignoring that heresy for something that concerned him more. "Have you ever seen a hawk wear a suit of clothes?"

"What? Well," she said doubtfully, "Do you mean aliens who look like hawks? I don't know of any. In ancient Egypt, on Terra," she said, "there are pictographs, in stone, of creatures that have a hawk's head on a man's body. But it is assumed those weren't real entities."

"I suppose mine was an illusion as well," he said, frowning in puzzlement. "But it **seemed** so real."

"Does this have something to do with that Council test?"

"In a way," Spock said.

She tossed her head. "Next time, tell Council to go fly a kite."

He looked across at her. "Why?"

"That's just an expression. I suppose that you had better not," Her mouth set. "However I feel. They wouldn't understand. And your father wouldn't approve."

"I did tell them-" Spock said and paused.

"What?"

Spock shrugged a shoulder, human style, forgetting himself in what Sarek would surely consider contamination. "I told them they could ask, but not demand. Or they could find another heir."

"You did?!" Her brows rose.

Spock nodded, a trace shamefacedly. "It was disgraceful."

"On the contrary, good for you."

He raised his head, looking at her suspiciously. "I thought you would have said I was being a brat again?"

"In this case it might have been warranted."

"Father was displeased with them as well. But I believe I lost control."

Amanda sighed. "Spock, the Council lost control. Suchon who started all this, he lost control. Your father lost control. Why should you believe that you, of all of them, should have perfect control? You're only thirteen. Especially when all the adults around you have moments when they lose it?"

"It is the ideal. It's what I've been taught." He looked at her. "I am not sure you really understand, Mother. Father has to have an heir."

"I did have something to do with that," she said, biting back a smile at his condescending tone.

He had the grace to flush.

"I just don't know what else they think they can ask you to do," Amanda said. "You've done everything and more. They should leave you alone. Particularly given you've just started at the Academy. And leave your father alone, too. He has enough to deal with right now, with issues in the Alliance, the Federation and Starfleet. Enough is enough. Even for the heirs to Surak."

Spock looked at her.

She sighed. "Am I speaking heresy?"

"I suspect so."

"Well, if you're going to school, you'd better go and clean up. But Spock-"

"Yes, Mother?"

"I want you to stay home for a few days at least. Not from school, but from these Forge trips. You need a little rest and food."

Spock looked at her, thinking of the hawk, shadowing him on the peak. Of shivering into his bedroll in the cave last night. His despair coming down the mountain and when he'd found his knapsack with the food gone. "Yes, Mother."

"I don't mean you're saying 'yes' to me now, and when I come home this afternoon, finding you running out the door again. Or gone. I want you to promise me you'll stay home." She kissed the top of his head. "Oh, sweetheart. You are the only son I have, you know."

"Yes, Mother."

She sighed. "Go, go. Before I embarrass you more than I already have."

Spock slid out of his chair and went to change for school.

Coming back down, he found himself detouring to his father's office. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say to Sarek. Or if he wanted to say anything to him. In part, he just wanted to get the inevitable discipline over with. He knew he had made an error, in choosing to come down the ridge on foot. Sarek had been right. Perhaps he should tell Sarek that. And he wanted to know the situation with Council. But when he stopped outside Sarek's office, Sprue was just going in with a sheaf of fiche and he could hear Sarek on the comm with Longworth. The Admiral was shouting something about defenses and allies. Sprue jerked his chin in an adamant Vulcan negative, his eyes flashing, all but pointing him out the door. Spock backed up and out and crossed the courtyard to his flyer, just outside the gate. He powered it up. The little craft surged against its anti-grav tethers. Spock released them and the craft flew high in the sky. He meant to go directly to school but he found himself detouring, briefly, to circle the ridge he'd circumvented the day before, studying it from the air, an appalling knife edge of loose rock and scree, dropping down into sheer cliffs. He felt his stomach lurch a little at the sight of it. Yesterday on the way down he hadn't really let himself look over those cliffs.

He ruthlessly practiced control now to settle his fluttering stomach, lest he end up in the physician's clutches again. But before he turned back to Shikahr and the Science Academy he took another long careful look at the ridge. He didn't see a hawk there wearing a watch and a hat. He didn't see a single living thing.

He understood, now, that this wasn't an environment conducive to survival. Including his.

 _To be continued…_

 _Review, review, review_


	14. Chapter 14

**A Son of Surak**

 **By**

 **Pat Foley**

 **Chapter 14**

Coming down from the parapets after his meditations, Sarek noticed the lights in Spock's bedroom were on. He had been sure the rooms were dark when he had gone up to the Fortress heights to meditate. Given he had come home from a late session at Council, he had yet to really see Spock since the morning that Spock had returned home from the Forge. After a moment, Sarek crossed to Spock's balcony door.

He found Spock awake, sitting up in bed, a large book with elaborate illustrations spread out across his lap. Spock looked up from where he had been staring fixedly at the book, in surprise at Sarek's appearance at his balcony doors.

"I had thought you would be long asleep," Sarek said.

Spock leaned back against his headboard, self-possessed and calm. He met his father's eyes, leaving the book – not exactly forbidden but never approved – open for Sarek's view. "I have been reading."

Sarek approached the bed but he hardly had to look to know what book that was. "So I can see."

"My classwork is current," Spock said.

"So I would have assumed."

"And my meditation finished for the day," Spock added.

"You still require rest," Sarek pointed out.

"I had been sleeping," Spock admitted. "Then I awoke."

"A dream?" Sarek asked.

Spock didn't answer. Dreaming was unVulcan, a childish aberration. Sarek had long expressed the view that it was a failure of Spock's mental disciplines. Making it essentially forbidden. When he'd been six or seven, Sarek had expressed strong views about Spock's tendency to wake from nightmares. Sarek had given up chastising and disciplining for that failure of control. But his views had never changed.

Sarek eyed the book on his son's lap, opened to an illustration of odd characters, some animal in form, some human, posed around a tea table. One wore a very outsized hat. "Surely you had committed the text of that book to your eidetic memory before the age of five."

"Essentially, yes," Spock said.

"Then I don't understand why you still peruse it," Sarek said.

"I find reading conducive to sleep," Spock said.

"Indeed? I suspect that reading imaginative fiction may be the reason why you still cannot control your tendency to dream," Sarek suggested. "Forgoing such might alleviate that problem."

It was an old argument, and one Amanda had long rejected. Spock flicked a brow at its reappearance. "My dreams seldom involve such characters or events."

"And the dream which woke you this evening?" Sarek asked pointedly.

Spock thought of his dream, the one which had woken him so abruptly. He had been on a sharp edged peak that somehow divided Vulcan and Terra, both of them down impassable slopes. To fall down either would have meant certain obliteration. He'd been losing his grip on his handholds, not sure which slope he was going to fall down. The hawk had not been in evidence. He had felt his last hold give way, the beginning slide from his anchor on the ridge to certain death and then he had awoken. Ironically before he had fallen down either, a choice not made in his dream. But he had needed to turn on the lights to dispel its seeming reality.

"The subject matter did not involve this book," Spock said. Unbeknownst to him, his expression and manner had shifted slightly while he recalled the dream, from imperious self-possessed prince holding court to uncertain child.

Sarek disliked seeing that transformation. Still, unable to resist pressing his argument in the face of the advantage Spock's vulnerability gave him, he suggested with a delicacy worthy of his reputation, "You might consider the experiment."

Spock lowered his eyes. Inadvertently, his hands tightened around his book. He drew a breath but didn't answer.

"At some time," Sarek added, relenting. However little he approved of Alice, or his son's wider indulgence in fiction, he approved far less this emotional clutching at the prospect of losing it. He trusted that eventually Spock would grow out of these childish tendencies. Though that had been a long held expectation, one still unsatisfied.

It was a tacit reprieve of sorts. Spock looked up at Sarek in acknowledgment of that. Unaware, his hands on the book loosened, "Perhaps." He didn't sound at all convinced.

Sarek gave a little sigh of frustration. He had been fighting a war against nightmares as well as fiction, for nearly a decade now. The one regarding fiction, most particularly Alice, he had never understood the necessity for waging. Particularly given Spock had, after all, long ago memorized the text. Sarek had never understood why retaining a physical facsimile of that text was even an issue. Regardless, it was not the book he disapproved of, but what it represented. But whatever that was, Spock was still unready to give it up. And now was not the time to reinvoke that conflict.

"Perhaps," Sarek said, looking his son over critically, letting go of the fiction issue for another that presented itself to his regard, "you should remind your mother to order you new nightwear. The ones you are wearing are beyond use. I am surprised she has not already attended to it. She is not usually so remiss."

Spock shifted uncomfortably at that criticism to his mother. "She has. Twice."

At that, Sarek remembered a recent comment from his wife about how fast Spock wore out nightwear. Tartly remarking that it was as if he were climbing mountains in them rather than in desert sandsuits. With Spock sitting up, rather than with his coverlet up to his chin when Sarek had last noted them, he could see even more how faded and frayed these were. He suddenly knew Amanda would have long dealt with the situation. "Then she has ordered -"

"I have several new pairs in my wardrobe," Spock admitted.

"Why ever haven't you recycled these?" Sarek asked, exasperated.

"They are more comfortable when well worn."

Sarek shook his head slightly. "Spock. It is inappropriate for you to wear ragged clothing."

"But no one sees me in them." Spock eyed Sarek. "Usually."

Sarek sighed very slightly. "You should sleep. It is very late."

With a wary eye to his father, Spock put his book under his pillow for safekeeping, then lay back and drew the sheet up to his chin, covering the offending clothing. The movement released the faint scent of silk into the air.

Sarek wrinkled his nose infinitesimally. "Those sheets — don't you find…"

Spock quirked a quizzical brow.

"Silk has an odor," Sarek stated, Vulcan to Vulcan.

Spock shrugged one silk covered shoulder, human style. "A little, yes. But I don't find it unpleasant. They are light and warm." He regarded Sarek. "Mother told me that you didn't care for them," he said, quoting carefully. "And I didn't have to use them, if I also didn't care for them." His tone left the issue open for Sarek's pronouncement.

"So long as you don't mind it," Sarek said, frustrated at this triple strike out, but unwilling to make an issue of it. Abruptly, he took the book out from under Spock's pillow, ignoring the momentary alarm in Spock's eyes. "I don't believe you require this under your head. That cannot be very conducive to sleep."

Spock sat up, eyes on the book in Sarek's hands.

The moment hung between them, until Sarek recognizing it for what it was, pointedly placed the book on a shelf. "It will still be there in the morning," he said testily.

Spock cataloged the book in its new location for a long moment, before switching his gaze back to Sarek. "Yes, Father." He resettled cautiously back in bed.

"Rest well." Sarek drew the fallen coverlet up over Spock's shoulders.

Spock waited until Sarek had turned away before he said. "I should not have disobeyed you, when I climbed down the ridge."

Sarek turned back. Spock was, oddly enough, still staring, focused, on the Alice book on the shelf across from his bed.

"The face was in very poor condition," Spock added.

Sarek looked at Spock a moment, wondering what he was being told. "Indeed?"

"It was dangerous."

Sarek thought of what he had ruthlessly not allowed himself to consider when Spock had walked away from him. The knife-edged ridge, the steep drops to either side, the dangers which wind and erosion could add to the face of the trail. Of Spock, trapped in some nearly inaccessible portion between the ridge and the Fortress, between the high pass and Shikahr, between wildness and civilization. Unable to move forward, unable to go back. It had taken nearly all his control not to demand Spock return home with him, and not to go after him. It had taken a great deal of control on his part to let Spock make that decision at all.

But if he were truthful with himself, he did not allow it merely to acknowledge Spock's Kahs Wan earned Vulcan rights. He had done it because he had considered that trying to force him to do otherwise might have resulted in a childish human style tantrum before the Council representatives. Something he had wanted to risk even less. So he had let him go. He had put that consideration above the potential danger to his son's life and safety.

And he would make the same choice again. Indeed, he had made it often in the past, from Spock's Kahs Wan to the present, and several times this evening, choosing to overlook Spock's unVulcan behavior, rather than risk dealing with the emotional fallout. It was all of a piece.

But he still found it hard to forgive himself, knowing the choice that he had made. And hard to forgive Spock, for putting him in the dilemma of having to make it, creating these unwelcome feelings within him. "You made that choice."

"I didn't create the circumstances," Spock said.

"That is true," Sarek agreed, shouldering that responsibility. At the time he had chosen a human wife, he had cared little for the problems of his offspring's inheritance. Of course, he had been relying heavily upon Vulcan's philosophy of IDIC, which he had touted to her. He hadn't bothered to consider Vulcan provincialism. Or that anyone would challenge him in achieving his goals – from T'Pau to that very offspring himself, now waiting for his answer. "You were correct to take your time in traversing the ridge, so that you came home safely."

"I am… pleased to be home," Spock said. He sat back then, obviously waiting for judgment.

It was as much of an apology as he was going to get out of Spock for their words on the ridge, Sarek thought. And more of an acknowledgement of error than he had expected. The moment stretched, Spock waiting for the delayed discipline his recent disobedience had courted.

Condemning his own behavior at that moment, Sarek was unable and unwilling to do that. Wrong as it had been for Spock to disobey him, he found himself more at fault to have let Spock go. Given the reason he had let him go.

Or, for that matter, to have even let the situation come to that, to have been so distracted by Federation affairs that Council had had the opportunity to hold such a vote. He had taken on the responsibility for raising Spock to inherit his Vulcan heritage in full, in spite of unanticipated opposition. And in not properly dealing with Council at the time, he had been remiss. But to be fair, he had thought such issues with Council behind Spock.

"I acknowledge that I was wrong," Spock said into the delayed silence. A pointed reminder to his father to leave him hanging no longer.

Sarek looked at him sharply. And Spock looked back. Between them was something unspoken. But all the more critical for being so.

Children want limits, Amanda often said. Meeting his son's eyes. Sarek reflected that she had regarded some of Spock's behavior as mere begging for attention from his parents. Even if all he garnered from that was attention of a negative, punitive kind. But that was something Sarek thought Spock had given up by seven or eight. This was something different.

But if Spock wanted consequences, to be disciplined for behaving in an emotional way as a means to curtail his behavior, Sarek thought they surely must be past that as well.

Spock had, after all, chosen a Vulcan privilege. Sarek would regard it as such and treat the issue logically. "When you have completed a full term at the Academy, and have regained your condition, I will see you supplied with appropriate gear, and lessons, so that you may take the High Pass with more safety. There are aspects of such endeavors of which you may yet be unaware."

It wasn't the answer Spock had expected, or Sarek could see, desired. Something died in his son's eyes. But Sarek would not be manipulated by disobedience. At least, not now, when he was in full control.

He did not want Spock to attempt the high pass. He did not want Spock to make a home for himself on the Forge. But with this offer, Sarek was making it clear he would rather deal with that Vulcanism, than all the half human issues his son manifested before him that cried out for attention. He required his son to be Vulcan. Regardless, as his mother had said, of whatever survival related dangers that might entail. He might be heartsick at the necessity. But he was Vulcan enough, and ruthless enough, to demand it. And to insist that Spock not be conquered by those faults. He had sent his half human son out on a ten day Vulcan survival test at five, with orders not to fail. At thirteen, none of that had changed. Except Spock understood his father even more than he had at three. Or at five. Or at seven. Or at eight. And given that necessity, there was nothing left for them to say, or do.

"Yes, Father," Spock said after a long telling moment. Well aware of all Sarek was leaving unsaid.

Sarek flicked a brow. "You need not inform your Mother."

Spock gave him a sharp look.

"It would only distress her."

"Yes, Father." Spock knew what that was code for as well. His eyes lowered, pensive and quiet. Lost on that ridge between Vulcan and human. And no guidance between them. Or even acknowledgment of the ridge.

"And Council?" Spock asked.

"There will be no further trouble from Council. At all."

"Yes, Father."

"Sleep well, my son," Sarek said pointedly. He waved down the lights.

xxx

Spock waited until he heard all the doors close behind Sarek, bedroom, workroom, outer room. And Sarek's feet walk down the stairs to the second floor, fading into silence. Then he rose, went to the shelf and removed the Alice book. Returning to bed, he put it back under his pillow. Illogical it might be, but it seemed necessary.

He went to the balcony and looked out at the Llangons. He remembered his trek down the ridge. His dream. Sarek's offer.

He went back to bed, thinking about that dream. He was caught between Vulcan and Human, balanced on a sharp edged ridge between them. Sarek would offer him Vulcan tools and lessons, because that was the Vulcan Way. His mother might offer her human love and such support as she could give, that being her way. But no one and nothing could help him navigate his own path down that ridge. He was stuck on it, stuck with it. He would have to find his own way. Make his own rules.

It wasn't all that daunting, really," he thought, pulling the silk sheet up over his shoulders, and for good measure, adding the coverlet against the night's chill. He had inherited a strong will and stubbornness from both his parents. In some respects he had been making his own rules, his own way, since he could remember.

And if he had to pay for that privilege, in his parent's, or his world's, disapproval or rejection? Well, that was nothing new either.

Comforted by that, even if it left him essentially as alone as ever, he closed his eyes for sleep. And this time, he slept without dreams.

xxx

When Sarek entered his own bedchamber, his wife put her own book aside. But this time Sarek was well enough controlled that he refused to let any comparisons bother him. Certainly his problems with his son were far from being solved, but at least he and Spock knew where they stood.

"Are you feeling better?" Amanda said, seeing the infinitesimal frown less present from a brow that had too often been plagued by it.

Sarek flicked a brow. "Amanda," he chided her.

"Don't tell me that you're not. I can tell. I'm glad."

"Glad," Sarek repeated, hardly able to accept that word as having anything to do with his existence. He watched his wife push her unruly hair, loosened for the night and tawny as a lematya's mane, back off her shoulders. Amazed that such a word, and such a wife, were so much a part of his orderly, logic driven life.

She smiled. "What Vulcan euphemism would you prefer? Pleased? Content? Well satisfied? Words are important, aren't they?"

Sarek began undressing for bed, tossing his clothes belatedly into the fresher lest his wife tease him about expecting attendants to pick up after him. He reflected that living with a disorderly human, he picked up after her quite as much. Though he doubted she would agree. He slid into bed, leaning over her, tracing a very human brow - curved as opposed to slanted, golden as opposed to raven. "Glad will do," he said, his expression relaxing as he looked down at her. "If that is indeed what you are."

"I could be. All we need is to be left alone," Amanda said earnestly, reaching up to take the fingers now tracing her cheek in her small hand. "And we could be so happy."

"We are alone now," Sarek pointed out.

"Not enough. I wish the Fortress really **were** a Fortress," she said fiercely. "And once we were safe inside, all of Council and the clans, and the Federation and Starfleet couldn't reach us. Not any of us, you or me or Spock."

"That **is** a fairy tale," Sarek noted.

"Well, I've been told my life is one, mostly by people that know nothing about it," she pointed out. "If I'm the heroine, you're Prince Charming and Spock is our precocious heir, why can't I have what I want?"

"We cannot always have that," Sarek mused reflectively. "Whatever we would wish."

"Why not?" she argued, her brows narrowing. "The Fortress is pretty well self sustaining. It's inviolate isn't it? Never been conquered? We'll just close the gates for good. Let the galaxy outside crash to ruins; **we** will stay safe inside, happily eating rose petals."

Sarek tilted a brow. "Now I see where your son gets his predilection for fiction. You are not a child, Amanda. How can you conceive such utter nonsense?"

"But then we would be happy. So very happy," Amanda said. "And that's all I want."

"It is not really all that you want," Sarek pointed out, shaking his head slightly.

"Isn't it?" Amanda asked, turning solemn. "Then I must be being greedy. I don't need any more. I'd be happy with that. Really, I would," She blinked sudden tears out of her eyes, and to dispel that emotion, leaned up for a kiss.

"Perhaps 'well satisfied' would be better," Sarek said suggestively afterwards, looking down at her with something more than mere fondness. He bent his head for a second, longer kiss.

Sighing and content, Amanda put an arm under her head and looked up at him. She wiped a scant tear away with her free hand, and smiled. "Well. I know what that is code for. But we don't need words for that, do we, my handsome prince?"

Sarek chose not to answer her. At least, not in words.

xxx

Spock was at the Science Academy, sitting on a bench in the Gardens of Contemplation, reading from a portable viewer. A pair of boots stood before his lowered gaze. He looked up to see Sofet.

"I understand you gave quite a demonstration," Sofet said. "I did try to prevent it. But regrettably my efforts were insufficient."

Spock closed his reader. "That was the subject of the Council vote to which you referred?"

"Affirmative."

Spock's eyes narrowed consideringly. "How did Sarek vote?"

Sofet sat down across from him. "He was not eligible, given his heir was the subject. Naturally he would have wished to protect you if he had been eligible."

Spock raised a brow at that, but forbore to comment.

Sofet sat back, deliberately choosing to regard Spock's silence in a positive light. "The Council is quite aware they have put a foot wrong with the heirs of Surak. Including Sarek, but most particularly with you. Your threat to renounce your position quite shocked them. They agree your point regarding the unprecedented nature of the test was logical. And that, while they may have had the legal right, they nevertheless had no practical grounds. They had succumbed to curiosity and…." Sofet paused to consider a word.

"The _Xhanzrei_ effect."

"Quite."

Spock quirked a brow. "And yet they castigate **humans** for falling prey to emotion?"

"Well, not even Council members are entirely adept at the Disciplines. They are trying to ascertain how to alleviate the situation with you."

"That is not necessary."

"And that does not even begin to address Sarek's displeasure with them."

"Sarek does have ways to make his displeasure known," Spock agreed, and then tilted his head. "Are you their emissary?"

Sofet flicked a brow in turn. "You may relieve yourself of that suspicion. Perhaps their present state of disfavor will teach them better the next time they have such ideas."

"My mother would say, they have made their bed, and now they must lie in it," Spock said pensively.

"An interesting expression. Someday I should like to meet your mother," Sofet said.

Spock eyed him. "That is the second time you have suggested such to me. Is that a request for an introduction?"

"Indeed, not." He gave Spock a direct look. "Not because I hold any inherent prejudice, you understand. Simply that I have no logical reason to request such, other than personal interest. Sarek would not appreciate that sort of interest. No, I am content to wait until a logical requirement or appropriate situation occurs. I am sure that eventually one will."

"My mother would find your statement very odd," Spock said. "Humans think nothing of such casual meetings."

"But your father would," Sofet said with certainty. "Those of Surak's line can be possessive of bondmates. And reluctant to see them with unbonded males." He didn't need to mention he had lost his own bondmate two years ago.

Spock was silent for a moment, thinking about that. "Perhaps that is why Father always dislikes seeing her with Dr. Abrams. I had never considered this before."

Sofet looked at him commiseratingly. "Even a son, I expect, may find himself at odds when parents are well and truly bonded. But such a bonding is a great gift for a Vulcan male."

Spock's mouth had set in a hard line at this, as if the conversation had gone too far, and agreeing that it had, Sofet changed the subject. "How are you finding your studies in astrophysics?"

Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug. "Satisfactory."

"Somehow that seems wanting."

"I would have preferred computer sciences," Spock admitted.

"You are young for that. I imagine Sarek wishes you to master a subject in the hard sciences first."

"So I have been told. Another instance where I am not to be trusted."

Sofet gave him a sharp look. "Spock. It is not that Council did not believe you." Seeing the look in Spock's eyes, he relented and said, "Well, a few had some concerns. You must understand that it is rare that Council is of one belief, even about their heir. But the majority simply was taken up with amazed curiosity to have what they thought was a legend confirmed. And your attitude toward Council seems rather harsh."

"I am not a performing exhibit," Spock said and his eyes flashed. "And since I have fulfilled all the traditional tests, I will accept no further ultimatums. If such a situation occurs again, they may **ask**. Not order. Nor show up on my doorstep unannounced. Or they can find themselves another heir."

"That sounds like an ultimatum in turn," Sofet said. "But no more than what I heard reported yesterday. You are indeed the son of your father."

Spock looked away at that.

"Not that I suspect Council will let it come to such an event," Sofet said. "But if it came to pass, what would you prefer instead?"

Spock looked around and then, almost involuntarily, up at the sky.

"Space?" Sofet said. "I know you have served a few apprenticeships in Vulcan defenses. Credibly, to all reports."

"Does **all** of Council know how I performed on my internships?" Spock asked, frustrated.

"I'm regret that is so. A report was issued, though there are natural differences in how interested various members of Council are in such things. You should adopt your father's manner in that. He never concerned himself with such interest. Or rather, took it as his due."

"His mother was T'Pau," Spock said, wryly.

"Very true. But your grandmother is she."

"That is not why I am subject to greater scrutiny. At least those on board ship logically concentrated on their duty and the security of the quadrant. Not my maternal heritage."

"So you wish to join the Vulcan Fleet, rather than pursue an instructorship at the Science Academy, when you have completed your studies?"

"Not quite," Spock said, hesitating a moment, and studying Sofet doubtfully, as if judging his trustworthiness. "Actually, I have recently been thinking of Starfleet."

"Starfleet?" Sofet asked, startled. "The Federation space service. Why an alien force? They have been much trouble to your father lately."

"Exactly. They are at odds with Vulcan," Spock said musingly. "They do not understand our ways. Or our dangers. We do not understand them. And both are so taxed by the wide gulf between these philosophies. This I have seen."

"Even your father?" Sofet asked.

Spock didn't answer that directly. "And yet, we must work together, against those who would destroy our civilizations, or enslave us. There is a Romulan threat to us both. Perhaps Vulcan and the Federation would each benefit from Vulcans in the Federation's Starfleet. If so, am I not a logical candidate?"

"Undoubtedly." Sofet said. "If other considerations did not have greater precedence. Which they do. You already have a position on Vulcan. And a most important one."

"But not of **immediate** import," Spock said. "Sarek's plans for me after I complete my degrees do not involve anything more than research and teaching at the Science Academy. I think I could serve a greater purpose in Starfleet. And, perhaps a more useful one. Improving communications between Vulcan and the Federation, and their military arm, could be of greater value, given current Romulan and Klingon threats."

"I still rather doubt it should be you, given your position on Vulcan." Seeing Spock was unconvinced, he relented. "However startling a consideration, it is not without logic. At least theoretically."

"I am honored."

"But you are sealed to Council. I regret that your fate and future is determined. And you must realize that Sarek will certainly be opposed. You are his only son and heir. He will not willingly surrender you to another entity's determination. You are too important to him."

"Perhaps not," Spock said, eyes shadowing, mouth hardening, thinking of his Kahs Wan, of his passage down the ridge.

"You are wrong about your father," Sofet said.

Spock looked at him, mute, refusing to argue.

Sofet let out a sigh. "Fathers and sons can have as much difficulty communicating, I expect, as Vulcan and the Federation. And it is not just Sarek that must be convinced. Council will also be opposed, you realize. You have long belonged to them. And they do regret their mistake, and wish to make amends. You are too hard on Council."

"I understand," Spock considered for a moment, "that Council could be a difficulty. But I think Grandmother might see the logic of my proposal. Her will would override that of Council's. And even, if it should come to that, of Sarek's."

Sofet drew a long breath. "You are a son of Surak, to envision pitting your father against your grandmother, and her against Council.

"I suspect she would find it logical to gather more facts about Federation forces from the inside. I may be useful to her in that pursuit. She is seeking that knowledge. I know, for I attended her recently."

"And when do you plan to discuss this with Sarek?"

Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug. "Starfleet has a minimum age requirement of eighteen standard years. I have time to complete my planned studies at the Science Academy before then. And to fully consider this. And then, if it still has merit, to discuss it with Grandmother. If I reach a conclusion in favor of attending Starfleet Academy, when I am more of age, and can find a logical requirement that would convince Sarek over those futures he has planned for me, then I will discuss it with him. Or with Grandmother. But many things may change before then." He eyed Sofet.

"I **can** respect a confidence," Sofet said in response to that unasked question.

"As I can respect yours, regarding your wish to meet my mother."

"I am honored," Sofet paused. "Perhaps you would care to join me for some tea?"

Spock looked across the gardens. "Not today," he said, politely but calmly. "I have someone else to meet."

Sofet inclined his head. Watching him go, he shook his head slightly. "And to think that anyone at Council doubted that he was a son of Surak."

xxx

Spock watched the students leaving the lecture hall. There were Andorians, Rigellians, Humans, Helios Beings, Neutmen, even Tellurites. And many, many Vulcans. The students were chatting, some were debating, non-Vulcans smiling and laughing with each other. But Spock had no real interest in the students, and none of them paid any especial interest in him, though a pair of instructors walking by put their heads together and whispered at the sight of him. He could hear them clearly in spite of their attempt to lower their voices.

" _That's him. He matches the holo on her desk."_

" _He doesn't look much like Sarek does he?"_

" _But he looks Vulcan, anyway."_

He ignored that too. Somehow, it no longer bothered him anymore. At least, not as acutely. He had another interest, and purpose. And then the person for whom he had been waiting came out of the lecture hall, shouldering her netbooks in one arm and using the other to push back her fair hair, looking so very unlike a Vulcan. She even smelled like roses.

"Spock," his mother's eyes widened when she saw him. "Is something wrong?"

"I thought, Mother," Spock said, stepping over to take her books from her arms, and falling into step beside her, "that you might like to join me for lunch. Or that I could join you."

And Amanda smiled, like Eridani breaking through a clouded sandstorm.

And in spite of all the Vulcans in the hall, he didn't mind that either. In fact, he was pleased. He knew, when he had woken this morning that he had missed his mother. And that he had to mend that relationship too, just as he had done, however temporarily and imperfectly, with Sarek.

"I would indeed," she said. "What brought this on?" she asked. "I thought you were embarrassed by your human mother? I might just kiss you," she teased.

"Indeed, that would be embarrassing," Spock said with complacency. "But, after all, you do want me to eat," he said.

"So I do," she said, looking him over. Her eyes, looking directly into her sons, at the same level, widened a little. "Am I mistaken or have you grown just a trace?

"Perhaps," Spock said. "That would make lunch more a necessity. And I've discovered the food in the faculty refectory is **so** much better than the food in the student cafeteria," he added archly.

She laughed. "Why, you brat," she said. "I ought to kiss you, just in payment for that."

"Please do not," Spock said easily.

"So you are using me, are you?" she asked, in mildly outraged amusement.

He looked at her, quite serious now. "Negative," he said. "Or not entirely. But I am rather tired of having **been** used. And I will choose my own way now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, exasperated. "I do so tire of these enigmatic Vulcan expressions with which we communicate. Everything partly concealed and half in code. Like a gambit in chess. Isn't that true?"

Spock looked at her, thinking of the chess game that was their family life. "Yes, sometimes."

"Why do we do that?" She looked at him and shook her head.

"Because sometimes we can't say the real words," he said solemnly.

She looked at him, frowning, half remembering some conversation she'd had with Sarek, before they'd, well, gone to sleep. "What do you mean?" she asked quietly.

"I mean that I am hungry," he said. And he let his lips quirk, a little, to divert her from this dangerous conversation. "And the toasted seed cakes in the faculty Refectory, the ones layered with fruit, are very good. I could eat three, I believe."

Amanda accepted the teasing with relief, as little willing to get into conflict as his father had been. Her brows lowered in mock fury, though it was a wholly inadequate caricature of the Vulcan expression.

"Could you indeed? You will eat something else besides, that has protein in it. Junk food is hardly- "

"The seeds are 12.4 percent protein."

"That's no proper lunch," she said. And they argued amiably all the way to the Refectory, ignoring the heads that occasionally turned to watch their passage.

Sitting in the Refectory, eating his seedcakes – as well as some trillium leaves stuffed with kevas and triticale, a concession to his mother, he noted Sofet leaving. The elder Vulcan inclined his head gravely to him as he slipped out of the room.

"Isn't that your father's friend, Sofet?" Amanda asked, turning to see who he was looking at. "Someday I'd like to meet him."

"No doubt one day you shall," Spock said, turning back to meet his mother's sky blue eyes. "At the proper time."

"Vulcans," his mother scoffed, but didn't press it as the door closed behind the elder Vulcan. "Is there a proper time for meeting someone?"

"Surely you have been on Vulcan long enough, Mother," Spock said, both teasing and serious, "to realize there is a proper time for everything."

"And there's that code speak again," Amanda said, and she shook her head slightly. "You and your father both. How will I survive it?"

"I think we all shall," Spock said, pensive and remote.

But then, because he was very hungry and he had a lot of growing to do, and because it was many years before he would reach his own proper time, he shook off that mood. He was determined to enjoy, as his father had essentially told him, this time between mere gathering information and using it.

So he bent his head to address that third seedcake.

And that night, he left the Alice book on the shelf. Somehow, he knew he wouldn't dream that dream again. He had incorporated that dream into his own reality. He knew he could get down the ridge, without needing to crash on either side.

And he wouldn't be late. He had an excellent time sense. Vulcan, really. As befitted a son of Surak.

Whether his parents were ready or not, **he** would be right on schedule.

And he didn't even need a watch.

 _-fini-_

 _Please remember to review. Fan Fiction . net gets ad revenue; readers get stories. But fanfic writers get nothing at all for the trouble and hard work of posting stories here if readers don't leave comments. So... review, review, review.  
_

 _ **A Son of Surak**_

 _ **By**_

 _ **Pat Foley**_

 _ **Part of the Holography Series**_

 _ **November 2018**_

 _ **Brookwood**_


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